


Red Archives (Kinktober 2020)

by TheGreatLibraryFangirl (Mazeem)



Series: Kinktobers [1]
Category: The Great Library Series - Rachel Caine
Genre: Age Difference, Age Play, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Altered Mental States, BDSM, Begging, Bondage, Chastity Device, Corsetry, Creampie, Cultural Appropriation, Dom/sub, Genital Torture, Hypnosis, I think that's roughly the relevant term?, Khalila adopting Japanese politeness into her kink life, Kink, Kinktober, Knotting, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Multi, Mummification, Naked Male Clothed Female, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Older Woman/Younger Woman, Omorashi, Pet Play, Prostate Massage, Rape Fantasy, Religion Kink, Service Submission, Underage Asexual Kink, abrasion play, asexual kink, sexual age play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:02:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 38,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26249899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazeem/pseuds/TheGreatLibraryFangirl
Summary: Kinktober fills from a list I put together myself. All sorts of porn lies within.Prompts and anything that I think needs immediately warned for will be tagged properly, and further content tags can be found at the start of each chapter. Because otherwise, wow, too many tags.Chapter 1: Service Submission (Khalila/Dario & Greta/Vargas)Chapter 2: Erotic Hypnosis (Rape Fantasy, Khalila/Dario & Annis)Chapter 3: Abrasion Play (Greta/Vargas)Chapter 4: Creampie (Annis/Keria)Chapter 5: Ageplay (Sexual, Dom!Little!Khalila/sub!caregiver!Dario)Chapter 6: Clothed Female/naked male (Zara/Botha/Troll)Chapter 7: Chastity Device (Jess & Dario)Chapter 8: Corsets (Jess/Dario)Chapter 9: Pet Play (Santi/Dario)Chapter 10: Religious Play (Santi/Dario)Chapter 11: Ball-Busting (Wolfe/Santi/Dario)Chapter 12: Older Woman & Begging (Khalila/Parker)Chapter 13: Bathroom Control (Omorashi, Khalila/Dario)Chapter 14: Mummification (No sex, Grief/Mourning theme, Anit)Chapter 15: Prostate Milking (mainly A/B/O, Khalila/Santi)Chapter 16: Knotting (Dom!Omega!Khalila, sub!alpha!Dario)Chapter 17: Heat Sex (Santi/Dario)
Relationships: Anit/OC, Annis/Dario Santiago/Khalila Seif, Annis/Keria Morning, Carole Vargas/Greta Jones, Dario Santiago/Khalila Seif, Jess Brightwell/Dario Santiago/Khalila Seif, Khalila Seif/Niccolo Santi, Niccolo Santi/Dario Santiago, Tom Rolleson/Zara Cole/Thabani Botha
Series: Kinktobers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2137629
Comments: 16
Kudos: 12





	1. Service Submission

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt list I'm using was composed by meeee because this year's official list wasn't doing it for me. Find it here https://thegreatlibraryfangirl.tumblr.com/post/626443791687106560/mazs-kinktober-list

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which i reveal my general incomprehension of service submission. 
> 
> have two EXCEEDINGLY different out-of-the-bedroom D/s couples.
> 
> Full tags and content warnings for this chapter: 
> 
> **Service Submission, Domestic Discipline (mentioned), Objectification, Naked Male Clothed Female, Femslash, Dom/sub, Asexual D/s**

It had taken many years, but Khalila had finally achieved being invited over for tea. 

Well. For tea, and, ahem, for _tea_. 

“More tea, my lady Seif?” Carole Vargas, Litterae Magnus and a terrifying battleaxe of a Scholar, demurely tilted the teapot just a little. She was wearing a plain black long-sleeved dress, with a spotless white apron over the top and a white cap on her greying hair. 

Khalila accepted another refill of the delicious hibiscus tea. “Thank you, Carole.” After taking a tentative sip and finding it far too hot, she carefully put the lovely china cup in its saucer. 

The table sighed, very faintly, and she put a quelling hand on Dario’s bare back. Yes, his task had just grown more precarious. 

Vargas turned to the room’s other occupant and made another offer of tea. 

“No more for me, Carole. Find some biscuits,” said Greta Jones, Artifex Magnus and absolutely not the woman Khalila would have expected to be in charge out of the pair of them.

“Yes, mistress.” Vargas swept away. Still, as in all environments, the very model of determined efficiency. 

It was _that sort_ of tea party. 

It had been awkward at first, accidentally discovering that most of the Curia members were also kinky in their own varied ways, but in the end it had proven fruitful. It was a case of weighing up the pros and cons: knowing her colleagues more intimately than she might have initially considered, or never being able to enjoy anything like this communually because of her status. 

And, anyway. Khalila clicked her tongue in annoyance at herself. This wasn’t even anything particularly scandalous. Vargas’ outfit covered her from neck to ankle, and Greta’s old-fashioned Colonies dress, with its full skirts and nipped-in waist, was almost as modest but in a very different style. They barely touched during these tea parties. Even after several years, she still wasn’t entirely sure if their relationship was even sexual. Which was none of her business, of course. 

Originally Dario had attended in full formalwear and sat by her side and tried to charm Greta without facing Vargas’ wrath, but more recently, as they all grew more comfortable around each other, the older couple had asked to see what Khalila and Dario ‘normally’ did. 

Which was why Greta had spent the whole time examining Dario’s nearly nude form with a fascination normally applied to feats of engineering. He wore underwear, as a courtesy, and a harness onto which Khalila could, if she felt like it, clip the leash curled in her pocket.

“So he doesn’t do anything for you? He just does what he’s told?”

“It’s nice to come home and not have my wishes questioned,” Khalila said, with a little shrug. 

Greta rolled her eyes to the sky and nodded. “A very, very good point.” Then she frowned. But, still. That means you have to tell him what to do. Carole just knows, most of the time. If I had to tell Carole everything that she needed to do for the house… well, I wouldn’t remember anything!” 

“You might, mistress, if I could construct the list as a blueprint of sufficient complexity and innovation, and figure out a way in which the tasks required tools.” Vargas’ tone was dry but the humour was evident as she walked back into the room with a tray of chocolate biscuits. 

“True.” 

“Obviously I don’t tell him utterly everything he needs to do,” Khalila protested, happily accepting a biscuit. “But, no. I …” She bit into the biscuit and murmured a compliment to Vargas while she thought. “I don’t want anticipation. I want obedience.”

 _He’s not very good at anticipatory submission anyway_ , she thought, deep down where no-one could hear her. 

Dario tended to start trying to impose his own views on what needed to be done if given the opportunity to ponder the question. 

Often, that was welcome. He was a fine planner, and he had helped her scheme out of many problematic situations as the Library creaked and groaned in its remaking. 

But in a personal sphere … no. He was best following her guidance. 

Vargas hovered before their seats just a moment longer than usual. Khalila caught her glancing at Dario with a frown, the laden tray in her hand dipping just a fraction. 

Khalila curled a few strands of Dario’s hair around her index finger and tugged. Carefully he raised his head. The cup and saucer twitched, just a little, from the flex of his spine, but they regained equilibrium quickly and he was showing no signs of strain from his position. 

“Good,” she said, in his general direction. “Carole, please feel free to put the tray down on the table.”

Vargas frowned more obviously, then moved the cup and saucer to the natural dip in his back and tested the tray for stability between his shoulderblades. She stared at it some more, obviously dissatisfied with the overall balance although everything sat reasonably securely atop Dario. Khalila knew that perfectionist urge, and it made her smile to see it directed at something as small as the contours of the human body.

“I could bring you in the small table, mistress,” Vargas said at last to Greta. ''Otherwise I'll be cleaning biscuit crumbs out of the carpet.''

Khalila’s hand, still in Dario’s hair, ghosted over his temple; a soft balm to the criticism. She opened her mouth to say something, but to her surprise Greta got there first. 

“Carole! Don’t disrespect the lady Seif’s things! It’s a strapping tonight, and don’t you dare let me forget.”

Vargas’ eyes widened with something that Khalila couldn’t identify quickly enough before it disappeared again under something close to her usual calm, competent mask. 

“Understood, mistress. I won’t let you forget. I offer you my deepest apologies for the disrespect to your belongings, lady Seif.” She curtseyed deeply. 

“Thank you for your apology,” Khalila said, which was probably an icier response than was necessary. Particularly since she could feel Dario vibrating with delight at being referred to as Khalila's ‘belonging’ and her 'thing' in the space of two sentences. ''Please, don't let me spoil your afternoon. It was my fancy, nothing more. One table can't be suited for all functions, after all.''

Vargas swept her with a narrow-eyed look. Greta coughed. 

''I'll get the other table. I was planning on bringing in more biscuits, anyway.''


	2. Mind Control/Hypnosis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ANNIS LIVES!!!! This is technically thus an AU but I refuse to acknowledge that. 
> 
> Consider this a concept/dry run for the erotic hypnotism fic I'm planning to write at some point. 
> 
> Full tags and content warnings for this chapter: 
> 
> **hypnosis, erotic hypnosis, rape fantasy, rough sex, choking mention, drunkenness (imaginary), face slapping, top-drop, slavery (canon-compliant, mentioned).**

Khalila found herself hanging back a little as she and Dario entered the room. 

It was, she thought, perfectly natural to be unnerved when walking into the territory of someone who could Mesmerise you into doing … well, almost anything. 

“Afternoon, Khalila and Dario,” Annis said gaily. She was sitting in a comfortable chair next to the window. 

A little bit of Khalila twitched at that form of address. Not even Scholar Seif? She immediately tucked that bit of fear-provoked pride away to pray over later. 

She cast a quick glance at Dario. Her husband hadn’t noticed her embarrassing moment of weakness. She wasn’t actually sure he’d notice if she hadn’t entered the room at all; he was coiled tight with excitement and already visibly hard in his trousers. 

And that, of course, was why they were here. A nice gang-bang for Dario’s birthday present. 

Well, a Mesmer roleplay of the sort, anyway. 

She had deliberately kept herself out of the prep, which had involved Dario writing several extremely long messages to Annis. Khalila suspected she knew most of the details he’d outlined for his fantasy, but perhaps she was wrong.

That was, of course, why they were here. Because Dario couldn’t get what he wanted in real life, and although they both enjoyed Khalila’s erotic storytelling in bed, there was no doubt that this would be more immersive. 

Annis finally rose from her chair then, and disappeared into another room. Khalila exchanged another look with Dario. No, he still wasn’t paying her a jot of attention. She sighed and clicked her tongue. 

“Sorry, flower.” He grinned at her. “I’m distracted.”

“I can tell.” She examined his outfit. He had spent a very long time inside his closet this morning, only to emerge with what, to her, seemed an entirely standard outfit. A black silk shirt with red cuffs and collar over a linen undershirt, and one of his looser-fitting pairs of trousers. 

Well. If that was the outfit he wished to be ravished in, who was she to complain?

To Khalila’s immense surprise, when Annis reappeared, she was carrying a tea tray with delicate cups and a steaming teapot. 

“Tea?” she asked, somewhat unnecessarily. She met Khalila’s gaze, and Khalila fought hard to avoid making a fool of herself. In close proximity, the scars on Annis’ neck from her lifetime of Library slavery were difficult not to look at, especially when Khalila’s instincts were telling her to avoid the direct gaze of a Mesmer. 

“Yes, please,” she said, just to spite her own unease. 

“Lovely.” Annis set the tray down on a little coffee table by the window, and they trailed after her. “Tea for you, too, lad, before you vibrate out of your own skin.”

Dario ducked his head and blushed, and glanced at Khalila.

That relaxed her a little. She knew how to be more put-together in difficult situations than Dario was. 

The three of them made small talk for a little while, on the comfortable seats, looking out at the third-floor view of Alexandria's crafting district. This was familiar territory to Khalila, too, this moment of observing polite pleasantries and pretending that you weren’t meeting with someone for any particular reason. 

But Annis subverted that expectation too, by saying frankly,

“Shall we get started, then?” as she put her empty cup back on the tray. 

“All right,” Dario said immediately. Khalila rolled her eyes, then rolled them again and tapped his knee chidingly; he was sitting with his legs spread apart in a most indelicate way. 

Annis chuckled. “It’s quite all right, Khalila, he won’t be seated there at first anyway.” She nodded towards a plain and uncushioned chair which stood against the far wall. “Bring that chair to the middle of the room and position it facing us.”

Dario’s eyes flickered towards Khalila for just a moment. She raised an eyebrow in return. 

Now she was worthy of attention, hm? When the orders began? You wanted this, Dario, you deal with it.

Still, she mastered herself and said, fairly gently, “Listen to Annis, darling.”

“If you want anything fun to happen, you’d certainly better.” Annis made a little shooing motion. Once Dario had stood and obeyed her instruction, she nodded and said. “Good. Sit down on it, then.”

He did so, hooking one foot over the other knee in a way which belied his nerves. .

“Both feet flat on the floor, hands on the arms of the chair if that’s an acceptable angle.”

He repositioned himself accordingly and nodded. “That’s fine.” His voice was small and quiet, and Khalila felt such a wave of possessive dominance roll over her that her breath caught in her throat. 

She looked away from Dario to try and collect herself, only to run up against Anit’s steady stare. 

“I’ll look after him, Scholar,” Annis said. “If you can’t trust that, then we’ll need to rethink this.”

Khalila considered that for a long moment. Considered calling it all off. But, no, that was just her being selfish and a little scared. She’d vetted Annis extensively, after all, and gotten nothing but good feedback. 

“I trust you to look after him,” she said eventually.

Dario beamed, then looked at Khalila and flicked a quick but distinct ‘ _I love you_ ,’ sign at her. Clumsily she repeated it back. 

Annis ran through a few more things, though Khalila knew Annis and Dario had already extensively negotiated and discussed troubleshooting.

“Right, then.” Annis stood and walked over to Dario, standing a little over an arm’s distance away from him. Without reaching into any pocket or sleeve that Khalila could see, she suddenly held a single coin, a geneih, in her hand. 

“Keep your eyes on the coin. See how it catches the sunlight? Keep your eyes on it as I raise it, but don’t tilt your head.”

Dario’s eyes moved obediently upwards. 

”Just like that. Perfect.”

That looked effortful, Khalila thought, fretting but allowing herself the pointless emotion. Wasn’t Mesmerism about relaxation? Sleep?

“With your eyes straining like this, you might start to feel them growing heavier. That’s completely normal, that’s completely fine. Just keep looking at the coin.”

Annis’ voice was quite low, but not as gentle as Khalila had been expecting. Firm, no-nonsense patter. 

“As you’re looking at the coin, at the way the sunlight glints off it, just like this, yes, excellent, focus on your feet, still nice and flat on the floor. Relax your feet inside your shoes, make sure they’re firmly sat on the floor, and still your eyes are focusing on this coin. That’s it.”

It was a little reassuring that Dario wasn’t showing any signs of being mesmerised yet that Khalila could decipher. Just a focused willingness to obey that made her a little hot inside. That was one of the reasons that she’d chosen Annis - Jess had told her some Mesmers could put subjects under in mere moments. With one touch, or one word. That had felt frighteningly sudden. This way, Khalila could watch the process unfold. 

“The coin is still here and you’re still looking at it very attentively. Good. So good. Your eyes may be feeling tired now. Heavy. You can let your eyelids lower just a little, if you’d like, as long as you can still see the coin, and the way that the sunlight makes this face of it glimmer. Your breathing might deepen, and you can notice that, if you’d like, the way your chest rises and falls as you watch the coin.”

Dario’s eyelids did indeed lower as Annis continued her soft flood of words. He did breathe more deeply. 

Khalila took a gulp of her tea and burnt her mouth, but it was preferable to dwelling too much on that delicious and perfect combination of relaxed and aroused. She hadn’t expected it to be quite so appealing, and she deliberately made herself remember, with a chill, all the dangers of Mesmerism. 

“As you’re breathing in and out, feeling your feet flat on the floor, and carefully watching the coin, you might also feel the need to swallow. Saliva might be pooling in your mouth. If you do feel the need to swallow, then that’s fine, as long as you don’t move those heavy eyes of yours away from the coin.”

Dario swallowed, almost immediately. His eyes were narrowed to slits, but Khalila could tell that he was still trying so hard to focus on the coin. He was such a good boy. She wanted to tell him that, but she found that she didn’t want to interrupt. 

“Your eyelids are definitely getting heavy, now. It’s so hard to keep them open, when they feel like they weigh so much. Heavier and heavier. Maybe they’re even twitching with your admirable efforts to keep your eyes open, keep watching the coin catch the sun.”

Annis moved her hand a little closer, and her voice grew firmer. 

Very motherly, Khalila thought to herself. Not as in the usual twee definition, but as in coming from someone used to being listened to. 

“You’re going to close your eyes, and when you do you will be in a mesmerised state.” Annis moved her hand holding the coin closer to Dario’s face, and to Khalila’s surprise, Dario’s eyes slid shut. “Now, _sleep_.” Annis tapped him on the forehead, hard enough that Khalila could hear the sound from where she sat.

She found herself holding her breath. Would it work? Did she _want_ it to work?

Almost immediately, Annis started speaking again. 

“I’m going to count down from ten to one, and with each number you will feel yourself sinking more deeply into this mesmerised state. You might want to imagine yourself walking down the Serapeum stairs, or walking along a path that you find meaningful and easy to picture. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one.”

Dario wasn’t opening his eyes again, but was that Mesmerism or just him being good? Wait! His chin was slowly dropping to his chest. 

“Your eyes are firmly closed, signalling that you are in this mesmerised state. Your eyelids feel very heavy, and keeping them closed feels lovely. Even if you wanted to make that terrible effort to open them again, you can’t. They’re just too heavy, and it’s too comfortable and easy to keep them closed.”

Fascinated, Khalila watched Dario’s eyelids quiver, his eyes rolling underneath. As if he was indeed trying and failing to open them. 

Annis made a very soft, satisfied sound. When she resumed speaking, her voice was more gentle than it had been. 

“The more you try, the harder it becomes. It’s just not possible right now. It’s as if your eyelids are stuck together, safely and painlessly.

“And that’s fine. It’s time to stop trying to open your heavy eyes, now, and just relax into the mesmerised state. I want you to imagine stepping into a warm bath. The bath is still filling up, and right now it’s covering your feet. Feel the warmth of the water soaking into your feet, sending waves of pleasure of relaxation right up your body. Listen to the sound of the water rushing into the bath. 

“Slowly the water rises, up past your ankles and to your calves. Feel your muscles begin to relax. Your tension ebbs away as the water level slowly rises. Any tense muscles, any worries, they can all drift away in the growing steam from your bath. 

“The warmth is creeping up your body, and with every new part of you which feels warm and relaxed and safe, you may sink more deeply into a mesmerised state. If you reach a point where you don’t want to sink deeper, you can simply turn off the flow of water and lie back in what is already there. It is entirely under your control. 

“You can feel your pulse beating underneath your skin, as that wonderful warmth brings everything to the surface. Every beat of your heart, you can feel throughout your whole body. That’s fine, that’s good. Just keep focusing on the warm waves of relaxation as they move higher up your body. The water is washing away any negative emotions you might still be carrying until you feel light and clean and very, very relaxed. You might hear the caws of seagulls outside, but you don’t need to focus on that sound. Just notice your steadily spreading relaxation.”

Dario’s breathing was very slow, now, almost as if he was asleep. His eyes were shifting slowly from side to side under his eyelids.

“It’s up to your chest and your neck, now, and you feel deeply relaxed and deeply mesmerised. You remain in your seated position, but you feel as though you are in the most comfortable position imaginable.

“Now, stretch out your arm as if you are turning off the flow of warm water. Good. Once you've done that, you find that it won’t bend. It feels stiff, as if it is locked in place. The more you try to test this and try to bend it, the more rigid that arm feels. You may try very hard to bend it, but you can’t.”

Now this was even more amazing than the closed eyes, Khalila thought as she watched Dario’s brow crease and his arm and shoulder muscles shift fruitlessly under his shirtsleeve. 

She was drawn out of her fascination by Annis turning to her and communicating, via a smile and a little tilt of her head, that they were about to enter the next stage. 

Khalila licked her lips anxiously and tried to prepare herself. She was fully expecting to hear something unpleasant. Dario had always been cagey with her about his more violent fantasies. Lots of frustrating, patronising lines about how she wouldn’t understand; she was too nice and good. 

“Right, then, Dario.” Annis’ no-nonsense tone had returned. “It’s time to stop imagining the warm, heavy relaxation. It’s time to start imagining something quite different.”

“Yes, my lady,” Dario mumbled. 

A little thrill of - of _something_ , of alarm, of concern, of simply recognition of her title - shivered through Khalila like ice water down her neck and before she knew it, she was half on her feet. 

But Annis was gesturing her back down again, mouthing that it was all right. 

Khalila bit the inside of her cheek until it bled. That hadn’t been addressed to her. It was quite natural for Dario to respond to Annis’ authority just as the scene was about to turn sexual. It didn’t mean anything. Come on, now, Khalila. 

Annis’ voice wandered in and out of her ears as she struggled with herself.

“I want you to imagine the dark musk of a soldier’s bar.”

Struggled with her desire to just yank Dario out of the room and pin him underneath her and watch him be good for her (only her!), again and again and again until she decided that he should have what he wanted. 

“... of sweat and well-worked muscles, the smell of hot leather …”

But no. This was what Dario wanted. He’d made that very clear. And she’d agreed. It wouldn’t be fair to call it to a halt because she was feeling … jealous. And panicky, and a host of other foolish, unhelpful things. 

“And here you are, little Scholar, in this dark place full of strong, forceful people. You came here straight from work, perhaps, tumbling down this ill-advised rabbit hole. Or maybe you came with friends, and they have all gone home. Either way, here you are, all alone. 

The silence grew in the gap Annis had left. Dario swallowed audibly, then drew in a slow, careful breath. 

“And you’ve been drinking, of course you have. What else should you do, in such a place? You can taste the foul dregs of your last mug still clinging to your lips. Your head is light and whirling, and you’re far too slow to react as someone sits down right next to you.

“They ask you what you’re doing in here. You’re very out of place.”

Khalila could hear, faintly, her own story-telling underlying Annis’ words. Different language. Different emphasis. Still, she thought that, for now at least, she knew the scenario Dario had asked for. 

“He starts touching you all over with his big rough soldier hands, and you realise that you’re too drunk to stop him. Too drunk to move, really. The very thought of standing makes you feel sick. 

“He’s calling you all sorts of silly names, insulting names. Things you wish you could punch him for, if only your head would stop spinning and strength return to your limbs. You know you’re not weak. You’re not a baby. 

“But right now, you are. You can’t do anything. You’re entirely at this stranger’s mercy, little lost Scholar. 

“He grabs your clothes and before you even know what's happened, you’re naked. You can feel the hard wooden booth underneath your bare arse. It’s so hot in here with tightly-packed prowling bodies that you don’t feel cold, but a shiver runs up your spine anyway. Fear. Helplessness. 

“You tell him to stop it, to go away, because you have to do _something_ . He just laughs at you, and _slaps_ you.”

Annis clapped then, hard, and Khalila jumped. Dario didn’t, and Khalila had a paranoid thought that he didn’t even hear it, that she could call his name until her voice turned hoarse and prompt no response, he was so lost in Annis’ web. 

This was new. The slapping. He’d never asked her for this, and she’d certainly never have built it in of her own violation. When they played out this fantasy together, the soldiers all loved and cosseted Dario, gave him kisses and hand-jobs and maybe gave him a good shove or a well-deserved spank at the worst. 

“He tells you to shut the fuck up and casually throws you forwards across the bar. So strong, he is. Even if you were sober, you’d need a knife. And you don’t have one. You’re defenceless. And he has friends. And you don’t.”

Dario was breathing quickly now, and faint ghosts of fearful expressions flitted across his face. But he was rock-hard in his trousers, so Khalila swallowed her growing chill. 

“You struggle, as best you can in your dizzy state, rolling like a stranded fish. He grabs your arm and wrenches it up your back. Your shoulder hurts, like a sharp muscle cramp but multiplied, hot like the briefest touch of fire. You tell him to stop, and he laughs again and calls you pathetic. Cold fear creeps down your limbs. Maybe you are, right now. 

“Then out of nowhere, there is a terrible pain in your arse. A burning, stretching, stabbing sensation. Someone shoving against you. And you can’t even scream because there’s a hand so tightly held over your mouth. You can’t fight it. You can’t do anything at all as the pain gets worse.”

Dario started to cry. Khalila bolted to her feet, her heart racing, adrenalin twanging discordant notes along every nerve in her body.

Annis turned to look at her, and her face softened. She held up her finger, to indicate for Khalila to wait. 

“That is what you’re imagining right now, Dario. I want you to pause there for just a moment. We’ll return to it very shortly. What I want now is for you to imagine walking backwards through that warm bathroom and up one or two stairs. Or three. I want you to walk up the steps until you feel like you can speak, but are still mesmerised. You can take as long as you like. Spend some time relaxing in the warm again, if you’d like. Just tell me, out loud, when you’ve reached the correct step to speak and still feel in state.”

She swept up to Khalila and put a hand on her shoulder. “Sit down, pet. You look like you’re about to faint. Or stab me.”

Khalila attempted to produce a polite titter, but it came out sounding more like a snort. Her cheeks were wet, she realised, Her entire body had reacted alongside Dario. 

“Looks like we probably should’ve involved you more in the detailed negotiation, hm?” Annis handed her a refreshed cup of tea. Khalila sipped it, even though it was too hot. 

“I don’t like to think about him being hurt,” she said, matching Annis’ hushed voice. 

“Well, he does like it.” Annis said bluntly. “And he’s asked for worse than this.”

Khalila winced. Annis squeezed her shoulder.

“That’s the point of this, dear. He doesn’t want any of this in real life. It’s safe like this.” She sighed. “I understand if you still won’t leave the room, but I’d advise at least not looking at-”

“I’m on the correct step.” Dario interrupted Annis. His voice was normal volume but slightly dreamy around the edges, and his eyes were still closed. He was - Khalila checked - still fully hard, as far as she could tell in his looser-than-usual trousers. 

“Good boy,” Annis said, pleasantly, sauntering back towards Dario as if she had no cares in the world. “Tell me whether you’re enjoying yourself or not. With the bar scene.”

Dario laughed. It was the same loud, carefree sound that he made when he was drunk, or very deep in sexual bliss. “Not at all. And utterly. It’s exactly what I asked for.” He frowned, and his eyes flickered hard under his eyelids. “Are you angling for a tip?”

Khalila spluttered her mouthful of tea mostly back into its cup at his supercilious tone. Annis had clapped her hand over her mouth, and when she spoke again there was clear laughter in her voice. 

“No, not at all. Just checking on you. Now, concentrate for me again on the long stretch of stairs beneath you. Take your time in descending to each lower stage, until you feel far down enough to return to our little scene …”

Feeling decidedly reassured by Dario’s frank attitude, Khalila took Annis’ advice and turned away from Dario, curling her stockinged feet up onto the chair and hugging the warm cup of tea to her like a comfort item. 

It was still frankly, unpleasant, listening to the rest of it. Again, she recognised elements. Like the ring of soldiers surrounding him, telling him he wasn’t going anywhere until he’d done his job. 

And, all right, she had been expecting there to be vicious, unsafe and unrealistic choking involved, especially on a penis. He _had_ shared that darker desire with her. 

But all the … punching, slapping, and kicking? Kicking? In the _groin_?

It’s not real life, she reminded herself firmly, as Annis started yet another awful description of violent anal sex, with Dario’s head pulled so far back that his hair began to tear loose.

She, however, did regain a fraction more composure when Annis reached a point in the script that Dario had to have dictated. Who else would consider being fucked with a wine bottle?

She was very, very relieved when Annis said,

“All right, then. I'm going to count from one back up to ten. With every number you become more and more awake, more and more alert. You may repeat the numbers back to me, if you'd like. When I say ‘ten’, you will return to your usual mental state, although still unrelievedly aroused.”

Annis winked at Khalila when she said that. Khalila crooked her mouth in a weak smile. What was she going to do with that arousal was the question.

He wasn’t going to come to any of that stuff, she decided, with a fierce possessive rush to her thoughts. He was going to come to her stimuli, when she wanted him to. Yes. 

She thought about that for a while, as Annis and Dario droned numbers at each other (interestingly, Dario started in Spanish and only switched back at about four), so that when Dario finally opened his eyes and grinned a little dazedly at her, she was prepared to grin right back.


	3. Abrasion Play - Greta/Vargas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full content tags/warnings: Service Submission, D/s, Nudity, Sexual contact, Abrasion Play, Masochism, Dominant Masochism
> 
> Let me know if you need anything more added. 
> 
> me @ me: hey did you know that things would take less time to write and also be more fun to read if you didn't infodump unnecessary research on the readers??
> 
> me: CLOTHES INFO FUN. 
> 
> im sorry. this is 50% clothes bullshit.

Part of the fun of this for Carole Vargas, Litterae Mangus, was how much more involved everything became. Preparing food and doing housework without modern technology. Even undressing her mistress, Greta Jones, Artifex Magnus, was far more than merely shucking the dress and the underwear. 

Firstly she took off the luxurious cap, which was embroidered with jewels, and patted at Greta’s dark hair until it fluffed up again. Greta stepped back and placed her shiny black shoe on the footstool. 

One shoe off, then the other. Vargas gave her mistress’ stockinged feet a little rub, even though the shoes weren’t heeled and had been well broken-in. She hid a smile as Greta wriggled her toes in wordless thanks.

Moving the footstool to the side and standing up again, Vargas quickly, yet carefully, removed the equally delicate muslin apron and lace _fichu_ shawl from around Greta’s waist and neck, respectively. Being a good six inches taller than Greta was quite useful for a number of tasks. 

Next she unpinned Greta’s expensive teal gown from her stomacher, which let the heavier material fall away a little. All the easier for Greta to slip her arms out of. 

More pins, now, out of the stomacher itself, a flat, very pretty panel designed to help create the right silhouette. Greta sighed a little as the panel came away and the natural larger shape of her belly curved back into place. Vargas very much wanted to give that part a little rub, but, no. She had a role to perform and she demanded perfection from herself far more stringently than Greta.

A similar relieved reaction followed when Vargas released the stays and Greta’s wide, soft breasts dropped lower. 

Vargas raised her eyebrows. Stays weren’t supposed to be restrictive. “Too tight, mistress?”

Greta shook her head. “Just nice to have them free, isn’t it? In all outfits?” She shook her shoulders, jiggling her freed bosom, and Vargas had to bite her cheek very hard not to laugh. How unfair of her mistress.

Heat grew in her core as she made quick work on the remaining layers. Two petticoats neatly folded and put aside, and then Greta’s form was only hindered from view by delicate cotton drawers and a slip. The drawers were, of course, entirely open at the bottom, and as she slid them down Greta’s legs Vargas caught a gratifying sign that her mistress was affected by this process too. 

While she was down there, enjoying being down there rather too much, she untied the ribbons from Greta's thighs and slid the silk stockings gently down. So soft. 

Next, the slip, warm from its direct contact with Greta’s body.

Do not be jealous of clothing, Carole, she scolded herself as she drew it free. She had a long way to go before she might receive the reward of curling up in bed with Greta. 

Had she just said she liked being taller than her mistress? Well, clearly that had been false. If she were shorter, she could cast her eyes down demurely. Safely. But as it was? There was nowhere safe to look, really. Not at Greta’s Rubenesque body, catching the light of the glows and shining a warm brown. Not at her dark eyes, twinkling at Vargas in a confident manner that made her feel simultaneously seen and known, and yet accepted. 

The bath had been left running while the undressing was happening, and Vargas had kept an eye on the clock, so she gave herself a mental slap and confidently gestured to the bathroom. “Your bath is ready, mistress.”

Vargas waited on tenterhooks until noises from the bathroom indicated that Greta had not only entered the bath, but found the drink and book that Vargas had left her. 

Silence meant satisfaction, and Vargas relaxed. Then set about torturing herself with thoughts of Greta’s soft, hot, slick skin in the fragrant bathwater. She was dressed in nearly as many layers as Greta, though of simpler, more homely material, and the outfit seemed quite … restrictive all of a sudden. 

Half an hour later, with her longing banked at a bearable simmer, she heard the bath water start to gurgle down the plughole. 

“Are you ready for your scrub, mistress?” she asked, feasting her eyes on Greta’s expanse of curved, flushed-pink flesh.

“Ooh!” Greta beamed. She always left what would happen after a bath up to Vargas. Luckily, her mistresses’ tastes were varied and there was always plenty to allow Vargas to indulge her whims. 

Like this one, enabling her to touch every single inch of Greta. She could genuinely feel her pulse between her legs as she sat next to the bath and lowered the rough cloth to the smooth slope of Greta’s shoulder. 

Against her palm, the cloth was smooth, but its alternate side was very rough. Quite similar to sandpaper. It passed over Greta’s skin with no effect at first. Just a gentle scratching sensation, tantalising them both, as the cloth slid over the swells of Greta’s breasts, the bulge of her stomach, and down chastely over her plump thighs. 

But there was work to be done. So on the second pass, Vargas pressed down a little harder. Her senses felt both heightened and dizzied in the steamy bathroom, as though she could feel every single minute bump on the cloth catch and rub. This time Greta made a pleased sound when the cloth passed over her breasts, and Vargas fought the urge to stay there and give her mistress more pleasure. No. There was still a job to do. She did dip, though, teasingly, between Greta’s legs, on that pass-through and both of them groaned in near-unison at the drag of the cloth. 

It was difficult to tell any effects from the colour of Greta’s skin, since it didn’t naturally show much for friction or increased blood flow, and any faint ruddy tone could easily have been the heat from that bath. But by the third careful, meticulous journey of the rough, coarse cloth, the practical side of this task was getting results; dark balls and small rolls were starting to come away. Dead skin and dirt from daily living, all sloughing off under Vargas’ hard strokes. 

“You’re shedding,” Vargas said, deadpan, like she always did, and Greta laughed as if it was still as funny as it had been the first time. 

On it went, until Greta was shifting around restlessly in the bath, alternately thrusting towards the painful scrape and twisting away from it. Vargas took that as the sign to shift from practicality to sexuality, and let herself dwell on all the most beautiful, softest parts of Greta, grinding the cloth into her stomach and breasts hard enough to make her own hand ache a little. 

“Ow,” Greta said, breathlessly, grabbing a handful of her own thigh as if it could distract her from the rasping directly on her nipple. “Ow. Ow, ow, ow! Perfect. Ouch.” Vargas could actually _ hear _ the sound, and only Greta’s delighted expression stopped her from wanting to flinch in sympathy. “Harder. Yes.”

After a few more minutes, Vargas withdrew the cloth and lowered her head to Greta’s breast. Greta writhed underneath her and shivered and made lascivious noises as Vargas swirled her tongue around the burning-hot, much-abused skin. With her skin so incredibly sensitised, almost any touch would feel like sandpaper now. 

Then Greta grabbed Vargas’ wrist and dragged the cloth between her legs. Vargas twisted her wrist in and up, and knew that she’d got it just right across Greta’s clit when Greta gasped like she couldn’t remember how to breathe and bucked her hips up so hard that Vargas was nearly dislodged. 

“So good,” Greta babbled, clutching at Vargas’ head and shoulders. “Yes. Best. Harder. Oh, my. Oh!” 

Three orgasms passed that way before Greta allowed Vargas to put her tongue there instead, and start trying to soothe the skin back down to normality a little.

“Ow,” Greta mumbled again in a dazed voice, and laughed at nothing at all. “Are you trying to break a record for orgasms here, dearest?”

Vargas reluctantly removed her lips from Greta’s juicy folds. “I wasn’t,” she said. Greta grinned and pushed her back down again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! A lot of meta rambling about clothing follows, feel to to ignore. 
> 
> So, normally I tend to start from Victoria/Edwardian and worldbuild outwards for Great Library fics. However, I don't think clothing fits that. It's more modern. Here, in order to give the same sort of impression that Victorian clothing would give us, I've made Greta's outfit vaguely 18th century (British, sorry).
> 
> I think that fits with the little we see - we never, even in a female POV, hear anything about stockings or corsets or petticoats. The women seem to dress in a way not too dissimilar to our modern idea of just "wearing a dress". Very amorphous, unhelpful. They also wear trousers with no comment made about this - excellent, I 100% approve, and who says the Library stuck to our sexism timeline?? But it's another reason for me to nudge the clothing norms more forward than I might otherwise. 
> 
> The men, at least to my mind, mark it more firmly as "at latest first half of the twentieth century for clothing", by which I mean the concept of wearing an "undershirt" to protect your shirt from sweat is still very much a thing, no sign of T-shirts, and nothing other than "trousers" described. Suit jackets also ... I get the impression they're not long in canon, so, 1920s onwards maybe? Though I will put Wolfe in a suitably swishy frock coat one day, just you wait. Jeans and T-shirts both became more common in about the 1950s/60s, from what I can see. 
> 
> We may also have status biases here, since most of the time our characters are dressing for the rarefied atmosphere of the Great Library.
> 
> Anyway, that's my vague rationale.


	4. Creampie - Annis/Keria

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full list of tags for this chapter:
> 
> **Creampie, Femslash, Oral Sex, Obscurists in the Iron Tower, slavery mention, Bad Sex, Aromantic Annis, Friends with Benefits**
> 
> let me know if I should add more!

It was quite late at night when Annis heard fast, familiar footsteps hurtling down the corridor. A longer shift than usual slaving away in the copyist workplace, partly covering for someone who was ill, had left her feeling drained and grumpy, but she brightened quick enough at the sound. 

She scooped up her discarded Blank, with a Spanish textbook prominently loaded into it, and tried to look like she’d been busy. 

“You could knock, you know,” she said as Keria burst through her door.

“Oh, shut up.” Perspiration gleamed bronze at Keria’s temples, and her robe had obviously been thrown on in a hurry. Her lips looked sore at the corners. “Hurry up and get your ridiculous fetish sorted so that I can come.”

Annis rolled her eyes at the dramatic tone, and patted the bedspread next to her. “Stop towering over me.”

“That’s not difficult,” Keria shot back, and she plopped herself down. Keria’s height was in her legs and Annis had a long torso for her height, so sat side by side they looked almost the same. 

Annis regarded Keria for a moment. Saw her shifting slightly where she sat, and not quite catching her breath. 

Normally Keria just came to her mentally frustrated. Seemed like Eskander might finally be managing physical frustration too. 

She sighed and leaned in to peck her gently on her cheek. “He’s getting better, then?”

Keria huffed out a sharp sigh. “Yes. That’s one way of putting it.”

The problem was that between Keria being ear-marked as Gregory’s match ever since her late puberty and Eskander spending his childhood on the run, their (scheduled, assigned) sex life had a severe lack of skill. 

Annis made a comforting tutting sound as she unwrapped Keria from her loose robe and pushed her nude form backwards onto the bed. 

She eyed Keria’s dark nipples, taut and shining with saliva, faintly marked by what she assumed were teeth. “Ooh, well done. You’re getting better at asking him for things, too.” She rubbed one peak fondly. Keria squirmed and let out a stream of curses, lurching up from her prone position to try to shove Annis to her knees. 

“Get _on_ with it!”

“All right, all right.” Annis quickly slid Keria’s underwear down to her ankles and watched avidly as the last of Eskander’s come leaked out of Keria’s wet, puffy folds. It looked quite striking, that viscous creamy line against the dark shine of Keria’s skin.

Annis patted the area gently with two fingers as a brief warning, then dipped inside to scoop out any remnants. 

Keria didn’t have it quite right. It wasn’t a fetish. Heaven only knew, Annis had a few of those, and was happy to join in with many more.

It was just a little vindictive game that she liked to play. It had started with her own assigned partners, and grew to anyone who would accommodate her. Watching even one drop of semen escape its assigned vessel was bitterly satisfying. Like a personal, unstoppable fuck you to Gregory and the whole horrific breeding system. 

She shook herself out of her thoughts. She’d dwell in them again later. Keria wasn’t making a fuss over nothing; Annis’ fingers fairly glided into Keria’s hot, swollen insides, and as they did so Keria moaned aloud and clenched even tighter. 

Taking pity, Annis crooked her fingers upwards, hard, against Keria’s already-roughened sweet spot and bent in to lick right from her filled entrance to her exposed clit. That was more erect than usual too. 

“Tell me how he’s getting better,” she demanded, flattening her tongue over Keria’s clit and then sucking. 

Keria made an incoherent noise and clamped her thighs around Annis’ ears. “Later.”

Making the future Obscurist Magnus whine always made Annis grin, but her lips had more important things to be doing right now. It didn’t take long at all before Keria went rigid and her rapid breathing crescendoed in frantic groans. 

“Better, pet?” Annis murmured against the hot skin at her lips. She eased away from Keria’s sensitive clit and kissed the inside of her thighs instead. 

Her own thighs were tightening rhythmically, sending warm, shivering shocks up her spine. She couldn’t quite come like this, but it was definitely a nice tease. 

“Mm. Yes. Come here. Your turn.” Keria patted the mattress beside her. Her tone was breathless and soft; sex-drunk still. 

Annis nibbled on one of Keria’s folds, sucking the taste from it, knowing more would flow to replace it. “In a minute. You said you would tell me how he’d improved.” She pulled her lips over her teeth and bit slightly harder with the softened nubs. “Let’s start here. Tell me everything he did here.”

Keria made a frustrated sound, but obeyed. By the time that Annis had made her slow way up to Keria’s nipples, reclaiming them with her own teeth, hearing all about Eskander’s nervous, gentle attempts, she was more than ready to take her orgasm in a slow but hard grind against Keria’s leg. 

“Thank you,” Keria murmured, in that ominous meaningful tone that she adopted when she wasn’t sure if Annis was ‘really enjoying herself.’. Annis laughed, or tried to through her panting. 

“Any time, pet.” She kissed the damp hollow of Keria’s collarbone and breathed in their familiar entangled scents. “Any time.”


	5. Service Submission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full list of tags for this chapter:
> 
> **Ageplay, Sexual Ageplay, Roleplay, D/s, Dominant Little/submissive caregiver, Topping From the Bottom, Punishment Spanking, Rimming (alluded to)**
> 
> Let me know if you want me to add anything else.

When Dario pretended to be much younger than he was, it was about vulnerability. Helplessness. Submission.

When Khalila had decided to try it out for herself, it became about _none_ of those things. 

“Uncle Dario!” A light slap to his cheek. “You’re not paying attention!”

Oh no, was it his turn to read again?

“Don’t hit me, petal.” That endearment had been his idea, and she’d thought it was adorable. Like a little flower. 

She rolled her eyes and bopped him on his other cheek. 

“Do you want more story, or not?” He took both sides of the book in his hand, ready to close it.

“Yes!” She flattened herself back against the cushions, looking like the picture of innocence. 

Except there was a mischievous gleam in her eye and that meant he shouldn’t be looking forward to this next page.

Sometimes she did actually read children’s books. They’d read the tale of Rhodôpis last time, and a simply written and beautifully illustrated copy of Kalila wa Dimna before that. 

Sometimes, like now, she amused herself by making Dario read from popular astronomy publications.

He steeled himself. 

“This first discovery was quickly followed up by the identification of numerous bright rays in the spectra of other metallic bodies with others of the hitherto mysterious Fraunhofer lines.”

He caught Khalila smirking at him as he fumbled the pronunciation of the German name, and gave her a pointed look. 

“I can make you read all on your own, you know, smarty-pants.” 

“No-o!” She cuddled up against him. “Just read the book!” She kissed his chest where he’d opened three buttons of his shirt, and he melted and picked up the book again - 

\- just in time for her to add, “It’s not _that_ long until the end of the chapter.”

Seven long pages to go. 

“You are a demon,” he muttered, and felt her lips curl in a grin against his skin. 

An interminable amount of time later, Dario finished the chapter. “What has so far been secured by them, it must now be our task to extricate from more doubtful surroundings and place in due order before our readers.”

Khalila had yawned multiple times as he’d read, and leaned more heavily into him, so he thought he might be safe to at least start the fight:

“Bedtime soon, petal.”

“No. I want to colour! I have a spectrometer page and that would be _perfect_.” She scrambled to her feet, and, when he just let her go without rebuke, turned to give him a truly pitying look. “That’s what we were just reading about, remember, Uncle Dario?”

He rolled his eyes. ''All right, sweetie. Why don’t I brush your hair while you colour? You can tell me all about spectroscopes, too.”

“All right.” She got the specially-commissioned colouring book out of the big, brightly hued box they kept these playthings in. “Anyway,'' she said, as her warm weight settled back against him. ''It’s spectro- _meter_. Spectroscope is a type of spectrometer.”

''Ah, right. Thank you, petal.'' He put his arm around her shoulder and couldn't help smiling. 

From anyone else, that superior tone followed by the factual correction would either have made him laugh derisively or goad them into a fight, but, well, Khalila being cleverer than him was an indisputable fact of the universe, and she’d probably still been cleverer than him at seven, or twelve, or whatever the hell age she was playing with tonight. 

If she wanted to work off a childhood of being told not to make her playmates feel stupid, then who he was he to say that she couldn’t?

Her shoulder was tense under his arm. 

''It is. I'm right.'' Her voice was small and petulant. 

Dario frowned, and kissed the top of her head. ''Of course you're right, petal. Have I ever doubted you on facts about space?'' 

''Mm.'' She headbutted his shoulder, and then let out a soft, more adult-sounding giggle that suggested she had spotted his careful honesty. 

He took the opportunity to just watch her as she picked up the wax crayons and set to work. 

She was still wearing her makeup from the day's work, but the khol was smeared around one eye where she had rubbed it just now and the blusher lingered in only the lightest of misplaced rosy shadows along her jawline. Her hair needed a brush; it didn't lie flat where she leant against him. 

At the start of tonight, her first childlike act had been to dive into Dario’s wardrobe and gleefully yank out anything she deemed ‘pretty’. The end result was an old ruffled red silk shirt with tattered golden braided cords along the shoulders. The hem came down far past her bottom and into ‘dress’ territory, and she’d rolled the sleeves up to her elbows. 

But silk didn’t stay in place very well, and so every now and again she’d sigh and thrust one now-covered hand in Dario’s direction for him to re-roll.

“It’s slippy!” A glare, like it was his fault. 

It was adorable. She didn't let herself be viewed as 'adorable', outside of this, so he treasured every moment. Every careless twitch of emotion across her beautiful face. 

And emotions there were. The third time that the wax crayon slid sideways across the page propped on the uneven surface of her lap, she made a loud frustrated sound and threw the entire box across the room.

Temper tantrums were something else she enjoyed indulging in. She’d been a very good girl her whole life, but not entirely through inclination. 

Dario sighed and got up to rescue them, only to feel her grab his wrist. 

''Be a table, Uncle Dario.''

He blinked, momentarily jolted into a completely different mindset despite the cutesy familial nickname. 

''Are you having trouble colouring in?'' he said, inanely and obviously, to crowd out the automatic, ''Yes, _mestra_.'' In some ways the dynamics of this weren't too different from their usual dominant and submissive roles, but she'd never be able to keep herself interested in colouring if he turned completely compliant. 

''Yes. Fix it. Be a table.'' She glared and tugged his wrist down, quite hard. 

''But I haven't brushed your hair yet-''

''I don't want you to brush my hair! I want to colour in properly!'' Another wrench downwards on his arm, with her brow furrowed and her voice raised, high pitched and grumpy. 

He raised his eyebrows at her. ''That hurts. Ask me nicely.''

There was an ''Or else,'' that he wasn't quite certain was appropriate to bring out yet, but they both knew it was on the cards. 

Khalila sighed. ''Sorry, Uncle Dario.'' She rubbed his arm in a perfunctory attempt at apology. ''Can you please be a colouring table for me? Please?''

He tutted as he slid to the floor. ''You've got me wrapped around your little finger, haven't you, princess?''

That adult giggle again, and she gave him a quick, lovely scratch along his scalp. 

''Ten minutes of colouring, then it's time to get ready for bed,'' he said, in an attempt to stay in the right mood. 

''Bed? Definitely not,'' she proclaimed, and started colouring again as if the decision was made. 

Except it wasn't. That was part of the fun of this. Although Khalila could control the direction events went, certain rules had been pre-agreed. Dario putting her to bed was one of those. 

She'd obviously anticipated a time deadline, getting him on the floor facing away from the clock like this. But he could count. He'd done much more difficult things on his knees for her. 

So after a reasonably accurate count of six hundred, Dario shifted his shoulders and said again,

“Time to get ready for bed.”

“But, no. It’s not been ten minutes yet,” she replied immediately. 

“I think it’s been very close to ten minutes. Can I see your colouring-in?”

She made a huffy little noise, but dangled the book in front of his face. He took it and sat up on his haunches. 

The colouring was very neat. It made him smile. Khalila could relax certain standards for herself. Others, not so much. But there was a sweet, earnest determination to the way she approached these childish tasks. It helped, she said, to throw herself into a task where her own standards were her only concern. 

He reached out and put an arm around her bare legs, tugging her closer until his head rested against her silk-clad stomach. The familiar smell of her, leftover perfume and soft skin scent made him want to stay down here forever. 

“You were going to tell me all about spectrometers. You can do that, then, and then it’s bedtime.”

She cuffed his head none-too-gently. “Stupid Uncle Dario. I could tell you about spectrometers for _hours_.” The pitch of her voice wavered as she spoke, dropping almost to her usual timbre, and he wasn’t surprised to see, when he peeked upwards, that she had one eyebrow raised in a silent question. 

Right. He had to get himself together. 

“Sorry, petal. Uncle Dario’s being a very irresponsible babysitter, isn’t he?” 

He got to his feet as he spoke, then, taking her by surprise, grabbed her and lifted her up. “Time for us both to be good.”

“ _That was not what I meant_!”

He laughed at that, a proper belly laugh, but tightened his grip on her. She shrieked and kicked his back and called him a number of fascinating new curses in Arabic as he walked towards the bathroom. 

“So much hitting today,” he mused in a thoughtful tone, barely audible over her shouts, currently of; 

“Stupid, bad-mannered donkey!” 

“If you keep this up, you’ll get a spanking.”

He’d said it very quietly, but she’d heard; her legs went rigid around his waist and she tucked her head neatly against his shoulder. 

“Oh, now we’re well-behaved, are we?”

“Yes, Uncle Dario. Sorry, Uncle Dario. I’ll be good.” She kissed his neck appeasingly and he badly suppressed a laugh as a cough. 

That was another one of the pre-arranged rules for this sort of playtime. Unlike him, Khalila wasn’t any degree of masochistic and wasn’t into spanking as a sexual thing at all. But she _had_ been spanked once or twice for discipline as a child, and after a few attempts at this sort of play, she’d decided that she needed Dario to have an actual threat in his arsenal. 

When he set her down in the bathroom, she gave him a cute sheepish look from behind a few loose strands of hair. 

He swept the strands back behind her ears and asked, “Do you want help with your bath?”

That brought a little defiance back into her eyes. She even put her hands on her hips. “I can shower by myself, you know.” 

Well, there went Dario’s little fantasies of pampering her in the bath. He sighed. Sometimes he got to treat her like she deserved. Those were good times. 

“Remember the hot water is unlimited,” he said, in an attempt to subtly remind her to be nice to herself. Please?

“Don’t worry, Uncle Dario,” she said, wriggling out of his shirt all in one go, without undoing the buttons. It made him wince, but she was small enough that he didn’t _think_ she’d stretched any seams. “I’ll make sure I get squeaky-clean!”

The smile she gave him then wasn’t childish at all. 

Dario's mouth went dry. There were only two reasons for her to be extra picky about cleanliness, and she definitely wasn’t on her period. 

He went back to the lounge in a daze and started clearing up the pens and crayons that she'd left strewn around. 

As usual, he’d left the bathroom door ajar so that Khalila could call if she needed him. The soft sounds of her washing herself didn’t help his concentration, or his frame of mind. Maybe there would be a repeat of last time, where she’d demanded he come in and rinse her hair carefully free of shampoo so that she didn’t get any in her eyes - while she touched herself to climax _right there in front of him_. 

He wanted to whimper at that memory, and had to bite his cheek hard to avoid it. He’d tucked his cock at a sensible angle before they’d started this roleplay, and he could feel it hardening against his hip. 

However, he was extremely accustomed to that sort of waiting, and it didn’t take him long to dismiss the sense of urgency. He even almost managed to become re-engrossed in a crime novel Jess had lent him. 

As a matter of fact … Wasn’t she taking too long in there? 

He cast a suspicious glance towards the silent door. The water was still running, but … 

Sure enough, when he tiptoed to the door and shoved it wide open, he was confronted by the sight of Khalila trying and failing to replace the book she’d been reading back in its hiding place behind the toilet. 

“Khalila!” he snapped, while his mind raced ahead. She must have put that book there in preparation. Maybe even last night. Delaying bedtime for reading wasn’t allowed. Which meant punishment. And then, including her little comment from earlier …

The near future unspooled deliciously across his mind’s eye. 

Buoyed up by her pre-planning, and as always, completely happy to let her lead the scene, he continued, voice as hard and angry as he could make it;

“You know you’re not supposed to do that! You bad girl!” 

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her from atop the closed toilet seat. She shrieked and started cursing him again, but struggled half-heartedly enough that he could move her around without too much trouble. 

He pushed her face-down onto the bed and said, over the sound of her loud proclamations that he was the _worst uncle ever_ and she _hated_ him, “You’re getting five smacks for misbehaving before bed.”

“No, I’m not!” She kicked him square in the thigh, and he re-positioned himself hurriedly. 

“Five. You’re going to count the number remaining for me, from four down to one.”

He dealt the first smack against her bare, fidgeting bottom, and felt her resultant flinch as a blow to his own chest. If she enjoyed this, it would be different, but as it was … 

“Four left.” 

His next strike was lighter, barely even warming his fingers. He waited for the corresponding answer, but nothing came. He leaned forwards to try to catch her eye, but she deliberately turned her face away and let her hair drape over her eyes.

“Petal?”

“My _grandfather_ hits harder than that, Uncle Dario.” She pushed herself higher onto her elbows, raising her rear closer to him. “Little _babies_ probably hit harder than that.”

Ah. That long-embedded burr in their relationship. He didn’t need to see her expression; he was extremely familiar with the storm-clouds that crowded her beautiful face when she felt that he was treating her too delicately. 

So he made the next one count. 

She yelped, but obediently said, “Three remaining.” 

By the time she said “None left,” her rear was warm under his hand. She was sniffing theatrically, but he knew what genuine tears sounded like from her and wasn’t concerned. Nonetheless, he was pleased this part was over.

“Well done, petal,” he said with some relief, rubbing her soothingly. “Go and do your teeth now.”

She did so. She even flossed - he could hear the little frustrated sounds she always made because she never, ever pulled off enough of the waxed silk. 

“All done!” she proclaimed, marching back into the bedroom and opening her mouth wide for inspection. 

“You are. Good girl!” He opened up his arms and she squeezed him tightly. He couldn’t help but hear a ghostly “Good boy,” underneath his own words, and it made his knees wobble. Even pretending to be in charge was such a bother and an effort. He was ready to be done with it now. “Good girls get rewards for good behaviour.” 

“Is it a pony?” She grinned at her own joke, and Dario laughed back, shaken free from his sudden rush of emotion. 

He caressed her softly rounded rear, and found to his relief that it was only faintly warm still. “I hurt you here, didn’t I? Why don’t I make you feel better here, too?”

She made a drawn-out thinking noise, then bounced onto the bed and arranged herself just as she pleased. This time, it was on her back. 

Then her eyes widened into a look so comical that he genuinely had no idea which version of Khalila was forefront in her horror;

“Don’t you _dare_ make rosebud jokes again!”

Dario laughed again, warm and full in his belly, and grinned wickedly at her. “Would I do such a thing?”

Then he dropped to his knees with practised grace and bent to kiss even the basest part of his beloved wife with the utmost adoration. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The books Dario mentions are as follows: 
> 
> The earliest known version of Cinderella, where a pharaoh finds his future wife, a Greek slave, by her dropped sandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodopis_(hetaera)
> 
> An early collection of fables, supposedly translated from an ancient Sanskrit text into Persian and then into Arabic in the 8th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal%C4%ABla_wa-Dimna
> 
> "Popular astronomy publications". You can read along with Dario here http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28247/28247-h/28247-h.htm#PART2_CHAPTER_I should you for some reason wish to. The book is "A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century, by Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke"
> 
> Why astronomy? Because in Ink and Bone, we find out that Khalila's specialised training is in "sophisticated mathematics and the study of the heavens." So a popular history is definitely the equivalent of a child's book to her.
> 
> Why the nineteenth century? Well, without going into far, FAR too much detail, that's the kind of vibe I get from the series. So I try to worldbuild from there onwards.


	6. Clothed Female/naked male Zara/Troll

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full content warnings/tags: 
> 
> Sex Dungeon, BDSM, Dom/sub, leather kink, blowjobs, masochism, tired sex, power dynamics, clothed female/nude male, subspace, mention of impact play, mention of anal penetration, mention of humiliation play
> 
> I've been writing this all afternoon so I might be missing something really obvious, please do let me know. 
> 
> Background info, since I regularly completely forget that most of this headcanon hasn't made it off tumblr yet: 
> 
> High Garda have a kink dungeon (Because I say so). This flagging headcanon is relevant: "leather armband means you’re observing/only playing with your existing partner(s), leather glove means you’re looking for other partners. Wearing either on the left shows you’re a dom, wearing on the right is a sub."

Troll's been handcuffed to this pole for what feels like a very long time. There's dried cum all over his body, and his arse is one big dull ache. 

He's blindfolded and gagged, and being worn out makes him oversensitive to the space around him, this little corner of the dungeon. Voices are very loud; chatting, calling to each other, groans and moans. The smells are strong too; sweat and sex and leather, the odd splash of alcohol, the even rarer not-really-allowed-down-here sweet-ish smell of hash. His mouth tastes of cum and boot polish. 

He taps the handcuffs against the metal pole, and the clear _ting_ brings his dom immediately to his side. 

"All right?" Botha puts one hand lightly on Troll's side. There's a welt there that Troll hadn't noticed until the touch lit up the nerves. He's not sure when it's from. There's been a lot of whipping.

The bright shock of pain pierces his grey fog of tiredness, and he hurriedly straightens his posture. Nice and straight, like a soldier should be. 

He'd meant to ask to be freed, ending the enjoyable evening before he embarrasses himself, but instead his pricked pride makes him merely ask, instead, 

"Water, please, sir?"

Botha's good at this bit too, as well as everything else he's good at; he tips the delicious water carefully into Troll's mouth and pins him back against the pole with a firm grip when Troll tries to gulp too much too fast. He's so fucking thirsty. He should definitely have asked for water earlier. Oops. 

"Few more minutes, then I'll unlock the cuffs," Botha says. His voice has that flat, dismissive tone to it. He doesn't expect Troll to protest. It's immediately all Troll wants to do, of course, but he's too damn tired for the repercussions that he knows Botha would enact. 

"All right," he says instead. Botha moves in close and lets Troll lean against him. His arms are very strong. Troll nuzzles his shoulder and his chest hair, and breathes in his familiar smell. Not much sweat there. Botha hasn't let much distract him from guarding Troll.

This position is comforting, in a way that Troll doesn't want to admit to, and certainly not with words. He hopes Botha will want serviced in some way, once the handcuffs come off. He could bear another cock up his sore arse if it was Botha's. Or maybe Botha'll let him suck him off.

That's a really, really nice idea.

Nice is a stupid word, but he's tired. His brain keeps trying to give him 'cozy' as an alternative, which really is stupid for a blowjob.

Anyway. Words aside, the thought of slurping up Botha's cock wakes a low smouldering heat in his belly. He'd thought he'd hollowed himself out, but maybe he could come again after all. 

Then Botha make a low noise of surprise that rumbles through his chest. Troll automatically opens his eyes, even though all he sees is the thick blackness of the blindfold.

"Got one more in you, boy?"

"Yes," Troll replies, quick and unthinking. Botha sighs for some reason, and to Troll's great surprise, he starts to untie the blindfold. 

"Didn't ask for that, did I, Thabani?" Familiar voice. Most voices are familiar in here, though, so that doesn't help his sluggish mind.

"I anticipated. Dressed like that and not wanting to show off?" Botha chuckled. 

"Careful." Fond, yet commanding. 

And then his blindfold falls away. For a moment his brain garbles the messages and all he can see is dark fuzziness.

Then Lieutenant Zara Cole materialises in his next blink, and he forgets how to breathe. 

Nudity is commonplace in here, with people of all positions and preferences generally considering shorts as a full outfit. Troll hasn't particularly viewed his entirely bare form as a direct element of his subservient role in here - until now. 

The senior officer is fully dressed. Oh, how she's dressed. She's got a short leather waistcoat over a long black basque that makes her boobs looks huge, and her legs are clad in supple leather trousers. Her boots are heavily studded and decorated, but very well-worn despite their lack of practicality. He feels simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated at the thought of how long it might take to get those boots polished suitably. His tongue aches at the thought. 

He barely needs to check her flagging, but he does so anyway; black glove on her left hand. Looking for someone new to command. 

Seeing Botha duck his head, just a little, only makes Troll feel smaller and more exposed. He hadn't known that Botha had subbed for her in the past. It makes sense, though. She radiates power. 

She prowls up to him like a panther, and inserts several gloved fingers straight into his stupidly gaping mouth. 

"Doing all right there, Tommy-boy?"

The name sends a complicated jolt of emotions through Troll. That's not very fair. That's only due to their shared connection with Niccolo Santi, who is the only person since his father died who still sometimes slips up and calls him 'Tom'. 

Still, he should probably have expected that the lieutenant liked a bit of humiliation. 

"Ready and willing, sir," he says, straightening his stance even though it makes his shoulders hurt. And his back. And his arse. It makes his everywhere hurt, but that's irrelevant, he's not showing any bloody weakness now. 

"Oh, bless." She pats his cheek then slides her hand into his hair and pulls it firmly. His knees wobble despite his best efforts. He hears the familiar, loudly telegraphed jingle of Botha handing over the handcuff keys and wonders what position she'll want him in.

Instead, once she's freed his hands, she grabs his shoulders and shakes him, hard. He stares at her, unnerved, unable to quite keep his correct stance. Barely able to keep his footing, if he's honest. her iron grip on his shoulders helps.

"Yeah, you're pretty used up." She pops the key into her trouser pocket, and as his eyes follow, he realises that she's strapped on. It looks big, but then they always do without the softer moulding of flesh around them. 

He finds himself licking his lips. He wouldn't mind that, either. He could surely put up with the complaints of his body for the experience of her focused energy. 

She laughed. A hard sound. "Oh, you think you're getting that, do you?" She pushes him. Flailing but unable to break the grip on his shoulders, he stumbles backwards, step by step. "I think I'd kill you if I fucked you now, boy."

Worth it, he thinks giddily, just as the back of his legs make contact with something soft.

"Sit."

He did as he was told. Botha would probably mock him for that later. He craned his neck around, trying to see his dom. 

"Eyes on me."

His neck hurt as he tilted it up. From this angle she towered over him. 

"Can you get hard again?"

He follows her gaze and looks down at his flopping, half-full cock. 

Can I?

"Yes, sir." He makes a grab for it, then freezes and looks up at her. Is that right?

She sighs and pulls his hair again. "Sweet. Get on with it. Follow the orders I give you, not whatever you think is correct."

"Yes, sir."

It doesn't take too long for his cock to rise again under his own rough handling, but he's satisfied to see it, anyway. 

She snorts. "Young ones, hey, Thabani?"

Troll bristles. "I'm not-"

"Oh I am sorry, sergeant-squad-leader-over-eighteen-brat." She laughs. The hard, mocking tone slid straight off him, though, because he sees what she's doing. Sees why the dildo she's got strapped on looks quite so big; there's only one layer of fabric there. like old-fashioned hose, her leather trousers fasten to each leg separately, leaving the crotch bare. She hooks her dark underwear aside and unceremoniously settled onto his lap. 

He drags in a breath, head swimming, attention still drawn despite her earlier words to the shaft jutting up between them. He tries to roll his hips forwards, so that she can fuck him, but she boxes his ears. 

Then she shifts again, and before his mind has caught up his body has _absolutely_ caught up, his poor battered cock rejoicing in her hot, tight, wet grip.

"No," she says, sharp and mean, when he tries to push up with his hips. She grabs his wrists and leans her weight on them, pinning them to the cushion underneath them. "Stay still, boy." She grinds down on him and groans. 

Time passes, then, and all of it is torture. She releases his hands in favour of stroking his back and chest, digging her nails into all his impact marks, pinching his nipples until he yelps.

The difference in their state of dress becomes steadily more frustrating. She has access to every single part of him, and he can only watch her covered chest rising and falling in front of his gaze, their shared perspiration sliding into her cleavage. Can only imagine what those might look like, bare and mobile. He imagines the sort of nipples that he likes best, the big puffy ones, and the thought of those tipping plump, beautiful mounds makes him buck his hips again despite his best efforts. He gets another box to his ears. 

"Tit-notised," she said breathlessly, and laughed at her own joke. 

She keeps going, grinding out her own pleasure while holding his away. If he hadn't come so much earlier, this wouldn't be so drawn-out. He can't figure out if that's good or not. Can't work much out, to be fair. 

His head lolls to one side, and to his delight his gaze falls upon Botha. He's yanking at his cock.

Troll whines at the sight of it, and before he even has time to feel embarrassed about it, Botha has walked up to the seat and gently used Troll's hair to tilt his head into just the right position. 

"Needy thing," he says in a fond voice that made Troll's insides go all warm and gooey. Troll tries to think of a response but long before anything comes to mind, Botha's cock slides warm and thick and moist into his mouth. He sucks on it shallowly and makes a silly, happy sound, before looking up at Botha, relaxing his throat and sliding down.

He relaxes a bit, after that. Her movements don't make him feel quite so desperate and deprived now that he has something else to do. Still, he'd really like a feel of those boobs. 

He paws at her chest. His fingers feels clumsy. In response she grabs his head and pulls him off Botha's pulsing cock and jams his forehead against her collarbone. He mouths mindlessly at her soft, warm, salty skin. Tries to stick his tongue down the shadowed valley of her cleavage, but to no avail. 

She laughs. She sounds almost as breathless as he is. But then again, he's lost count of the number of times she's come on his cock. "Maybe if we meet again, Tommy-boy, I'll wear something it's easier to get them out of, hm? Would you like that?"

He nods dumbly. Then he feels Botha's cock rub against his cheek, and automatically he cranes his aching neck to have it again. Botha comes just as Troll starts to suck, but stays pushed into his mouth. It's ... nice.

"Good boy." Her voice is almost soft, then, and her fingers in his hair merely pet him. Then she changes what she's doing and he loses all his air, watches her leather-clad thighs bunch and release until the stimulation of her rise and fall makes his eyes roll up.

It takes no time at all to come. It's almost painful, it's gone on so long. Makes him shake and quiver all over, brings more sweat to prickling life all over him and even though he's utterly naked he's so hot that he wishes he could peel his skin off. 

She stands up and walks away without further ado, and he watches her leather-clad arse swish away until his eyes unwillingly slide shut. 


	7. Chastity Devices - Dario & Jess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full chapter warnings/tags:
> 
> Chastity Device, Cock Cage, Exhibitionism, Nipple Piercings, Coping Mechanism, Self-Harm (mentioned), Implications of Jess being reckless and self-destructive to cope, Dario and Khalila have an open relationship

Jess wasn’t exactly surprised when Dario cornered him at the party. He’d been expecting it. He just wished that it had happened at the beginning of the evening, when Dario had been handsomely dressed in a black shirt, black trousers and a silver jacket covered with black and scarlet floral embroidery. 

Not now, after Dario had stripped with more than a touch of ceremony in front of Khalila, and revealed glittering nipple decorations and tight black underwear that did nothing at all to hide the fact that he was caged. Once Jess had seen that, the large jewelled key hanging prominently around Khalila’s neck made a lot more sense. 

Jess was a bit jealous about that, maybe. But mainly just didn’t want to have this conversation. 

He was wearing a shimmering dove-grey shirt and a chunky necklace to draw attention upwards, and trousers that he had paid for extra tailoring on, and yet still Dario was looking straight between his legs as if he could see everything. 

The old urge to knock Dario around a bit reared up in him - but that was an even sillier idea than normal, given that now that was something they mutually enjoyed. Given what he was trying to avoid, dammit!

He turned away and stared into his drink at exactly the moment that Dario said,

“Maybe you can fulfill what your eyes are promising later, scrubber.”

“Shut up,” Jess responded automatically. Dario leaned an elbow on the corner of the bar and grinned at him, standing with his hip jutting out and his damn crotch pushed forwards.

He couldn’t stop sneaking glances downwards. Dario’s cage was so ridiculously expensive-looking. Gold-plated, at least, and sparkling endless different colours depending on which minute jewel caught the light at any given moment. Jess could barely even pay attention to the small, soft cock behind the decorative bars. Maybe that was the point? 

“Don’t the jewels catch?” he asked at last, after he’d drained his drink and ordered another and Dario was still just  _ stood  _ there being … focused. It felt like giving in. 

Dario shrugged. Reached down and touched his cage idly. Jess’ cock began to harden as if he could feel that touch himself. 

“Not really. It’s very well made. Smooth on the inside.” His gaze intensified, then, dark and sharp like a knife. “Let’s see what you’re comparing it to, then.”

“For fuck’s sake.” Jess took his drink when it arrived and gulped half down in one go. 

“What?” Dario took a step closer and Jess’ skin lit up as if with electricity. “You show me now or you show Khalila later.”

Jess snorted. “She sent you, did she?”

“Why do you think I got undressed on the damn dais, Jess?”

“Because you’re an attention-seeking peacock?”

“Ha. That too.” Dario settled against Jess’ back, warm and familiar, but the hard press of the cage between his legs stopped Jess from relaxing back into the almost-embrace. “Because we wanted you to know I was wearing one tonight, too.”

“Just tonight?” Jess fiddled with his trousers fastenings. 

“The cage is, as you can tell, designed to be seen. It makes it extremely obvious, in these larger party settings, that anyone wanting my cock had better ask my lady first.” He chuckled and kissed Jess’s shoulder. 

“Stop that.” Jess hunched forwards over the bar. 

“All right.” There was an odd tone to Dario’s voice there, as he stepped back just far enough for Jess to miss him. That brilliant mind, working away. 

Jess sighed, and gave up keeping the secret. He undid his trousers and turned so that Dario could see his cock cage. 

It was  _ very _ unlike Dario’s. A three-inch solid shaft of steel, with a hole only for urine. 

Dario looked with that blank mask that Jess hated, and then, to Jess’ surprise and embarrassment, he grinned. Halfway to a laugh. 

“Yeah, scrubber, that looks  _ exactly  _ like a drawing you gave to Thomas.”

Jess stared back at him. Was that an insult? He wasn’t even sure. It was true. He had, eventually, crimson-faced, given the plans to Thomas. 

“No, I mean. It’s very. Plain. Functional. Heavy, too?”

Jess shrugged. “I got used to it.”

Dario rolled his eyes. “Of course. So, what’s it  _ for _ ?” He made an aborted hand motion, and at the mere thought of Dario touching him Jess’ cock reached that point where any building pleasure was quickly constricted to pain. 

He winced. He’d gotten better at not doing that, but it was hard to stay stoic in front of Dario’s sharp gaze. 

“Masochism?” Dario’s voice sounded doubtful. Jess rolled his eyes in response.

“Do you have the key? Does Thomas?” Dario waved the bartender over and ordered himself a drink, which gave Jess a moment to attempt to put words together. 

“I don’t. Thomas does, sometimes.” The key sat in a constantly changing puzzle-box in Thomas’ workshop most of the time, but he wasn’t going to tell Dario that. 

Dario’s eyebrows rose high. “That’s not sensible. What if you  _ need  _ it off?”

Jess shrugged. “Need is the problem,” he mumbled into his drink. 

“ _ Oh _ .”

Jess drained his drink and ordered another one. His head swam slightly when he moved. 

“You know,” Dario said after a little while, sipping his own drink, “that wasn’t necessarily what any of us meant by getting on your case about you being reckless with your sex life recently.” 

“No. I thought of it by myself.” Ugh, that silly sullen tone was the alcohol talking. “I just … I figured that it’d be easier to avoid temptation if I knew there was no point in chasing it.”

Dario pressed up against his back again, and his arms snaked round Jess’ chest in a hug. 

“And what incredibly stupid thing are you doing now instead?”

Jess sighed. Decided not to tell Dario about the group of Alexandrians he’d found who leapt around the city’s buildings at night. 

“If it’s not fun, then you shouldn’t be wearing it.” Dario’s goatee tickled Jess’ ear and cheek as he nuzzled him. “Do you  _ want _ me to tell Glain you’ve found a new way to hurt yourself? Or tell Wolfe?”

“Oh, it’s not like that,” Jess snapped, pushing just hard enough against Dario’s grip to make his protest clear without making him move away. “I like the challenge.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, you’re being so very, very typical.”

“Shut up.”

Dario sighed. “Well. Khalila and I muck around with chastity and denial a lot, so … if you want to eroticise that challenge, or take it off and have the weapon of your self-control be her command instead for an hour or so - which I would recommend, by the way, there’s no changing her mind - or anything. Just … let us know.”

Jess huffed out a laugh, and wriggled around in Dario’s arms to kiss his stupid mouth. “Were you supposed to just come and whisper that bit in my ear and then wander away?”

Dario grinned so hard that he couldn’t hold the kiss. “I had guidelines, and much space to roam within them.”

And Jess was drunk enough now to allow that deliberate double-meaning settle in his mind to think about later. 

It was nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe it could even be fun, after all. 


	8. Corsets - Jess/Dario + Khalila

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full tags/content warnings: leather kink, corsets, tight lacing, tailor roleplay, size measurements, threesome, D/s, voyeurism, embarrassment kink, open relationship
> 
> Let me know if I need to add any more!

Jess checked his pocket-watch. Perfect timing. He stopped the lift and stepped out into the top floor of the Lighthouse.

(Well, the top livable floor. Above him still were several engineering rooms, necessary to monitor and service the huge building’s air and water distribution, and one Artifex-only room, the crowning glory, the Lighthouse’ chamber, with its magnificent focusing mirror.)

He nodded to the guards on duty and obligingly proceeded through the stringent security checks. A little part of him chafed at the waste of time and effort. He was one of the few people allowed on this personal floor without an appointment and the guards all knew his face well. 

Still, he shouldn’t complain. It was a silly part of his mind, a shadowed part, that objected to him needing to disarm himself before coming into the most heavily protected residence in all of Alexandria. 

Eventually, he was cleared to put his gold band against the door, where Obscurist scripts confirmed that he wasn’t 

(his twin)

somebody else. 

Two more doors awaited after that one. On Khalila’s request, he’d tried very hard to pick these locks, and not succeeded. Good. 

To his surprise, it was Khalila who greeted him at the final door. 

“I thought you were away in Delhi?” he said, voice slightly strained as she wrapped him in one of her fierce hugs. That was definitely what Dario had said. 

“I was. I got back last night. We were done there, and the papermaking guild is trying to renegotiate its export tariffs, so I thought I was more useful here.” She grinned. “But don’t worry, Dario’s still waiting for you.”

He bent down to give her a soft peck of a kiss, and she immediately went on tiptoes to push her way into his mouth. Automatically his hands slid to her waist, polite but available. His dick stirred.

He wondered whether to tell her that. It was the sort of thing she liked to know, so that she could decide what should be done about it. 

“Are you joining in?” he asked when she next freed his lips. He sort of hoped not. Despite her determination, she looked tired. From the spontaneous-sounding travel decision, she must have Translated back. That was so much better than it had been, but still. 

She shook her head. “I have asked Dario to keep the door open, though.” She gave him a lovely mischievous look. 

“Voyeur.” He poked her cheek. She whipped her head to the side and very nearly caught him in her teeth. 

“Can you blame me? You’re both so pretty.”

“He’ll be so much prettier once I’m done, flower!” Dario’s voice seemed to be coming from the back of the suite. Jess consulted his mental map, and then laughed. 

“Are we really doing this in your bloody walk-in closet?”

“Where else, exactly, would I be able to find so many excellent examples?”

Khalila stepped away as he and Dario bantered. Jess missed her almost immediately. They didn’t get to cuddle enough.

“Put me in your calendar soon, yeah?”

She turned around and gave him one of those long looks from her beautiful autumn-brown eyes. The sort of look that made Jess become aware of his congested lungs, his mental health and his interested dick all at once. Her gaze reminded him how very happy she was to grab that whole tangled ball inside him and take its weight whenever she could.

He licked his lips and she watched him do it. 

“All right,” she said, soft and sweet but with that one raised eyebrow that made him flush all over. “I’ll book you in.”

“English! Stop flirting with my wife and get in here!”

The moment broke. They rolled their eyes at each other almost in unison. 

Jess walked through the suite until he found the propped-ajar door. 

“All right, I’m here for you to tell me how inadequate my clothing is, oh noble one.” His voice nearly faltered midway through that sentence, but he managed to haul it back. 

Dario really had gone all out. The closet was bigger than several rooms in Jess’ house, of course, and Dario had arrayed a frankly intimidating number of corsets on wheeled rails around a ‘working area’ that consisted of a table with a tape measure, a chair and a full-length mirror. 

Jess knew he hadn’t hidden the look of surprise on his face well enough when he saw Dario’s gleeful expression. 

Dario was, of course, wearing a corset under his jacket. A smart-looking black and gold thing that looked a lot like a normal waistcoat from the front. 

This was what had started the whole idea off, Jess noticing the way Dario looked in the restricting garment and Dario promising with a leer that he could make it more fun for Jess than a standard trip to the tailor. 

“I thought you meant, let’s try a few corsets on and then have sex.”

Dario sighed and shook his head in exaggerated despair. “Well, broadly speaking that’s still the plan. We just might have differing definitions of ‘a few’ and also of ‘trying on’.”

Jess groaned and deliberately didn’t step into the room. “Khalila’s expecting to overhear something  _ fun _ , not just you in fashion rhapsodies.”

Dario snorted. “We both know my wonderful wife would have more fun than either of us listening to me sexually frustrate you.”

“Wait, sexual frustration is on the cards?” 

“Shut up and sit on the damn chair, scrubber.”

Jess wandered in, taking his sweet time just to annoy Dario more. He ran his hand along one of the rails as he passed, feeling the quick slip-slide of silk, the drag of heavy embroidery against his palm. 

Finally, he sat in the chair and looked at Dario expectantly. 

Dario returned the look. “Shirt off. Keep the undershirt on, though.”

Jess debated stripping slowly, to see how Dario reacted, but instead he made short work of the buttons and shrugged the shirt off his shoulders. 

“Good. Stand up.”

One of the many things that Jess would never admit to finding arousing about Dario was this imperious, presumptive attitude when he was focused on a goal. Arousing and aggravating in equal measures, yes, but arousing nonetheless. 

“But I wanted to try on a waistcoat one, like yours,” he complained as Dario took a step towards him, tape measure in hand. 

“You’re going to try on lots,” was Dario’s dismissive answer. 

He wrapped the tape around Jess’ chest, just under his nipples. Took the opportunity to touch those, of course. 

“Thirty-four.” He was very close to Jess. It was rare for them to stand so close together without kissing. Or fighting. But he didn’t do either. Just scribbled down the number. 

Next he put his hand on Jess’ side and said “Bend to the side,” then put the tape in the small fold of flesh which that movement produced. “Twenty-seven. Jesus fucking Christ, do you ever eat?” he grumbled as he pulled the tape taut. 

“Runner’s build,” Jess shot back. It was an old, comfortable argument. Dario’s hands were warm on his skin, and he let out a pleased sigh as Dario knelt in front of him and moved the tape lower. 

But there was none of the tease he was expecting. Dario didn’t touch Jess’ growing bulge, though he did definitely look at it. He just adjusted the tape to lie lower, right above Jess’ hip bones, and said, “Thirty-four,” to himself. 

When Dario stood up, Jess could see that he was getting hard, too. Oh, God. This was looking like it might take a while. He always lost when Dario made it a sexual frustration competition.

“Where’s the … do I have a twenty-fourr?” Dario flapped his hands through the jammed-tight rail of corsets, then made a satisfied sound and plucked one free. 

Jess frowned. That tiny strip of dark mesh material looked nothing like the full waistcoat Dario was wearing. That looked more like the sort of thing he saw down at the docks, at the peepshows. 

“Waistcoat,” he repeated, already knowing it was a losing battle as he said it. 

“Do shut up. I want to see what you look like in this one first.” 

Jess gave up and let Dario get on with it. There was a whole row of fastenings down the front, and Dario knelt down to do them, then he straightened and went around the back. 

“Right, then.” 

The laces felt unpleasantly tight as Dario pulled them, but Jess was kind of disappointed as he watched in the mirror and it didn’t give him a ridiculously obvious curve. 

“Aw.” Dario’s head came to rest on his shoulders, Dario’s sharp grin visible in the mirror. “You wanted something more dramatic, didn't you? Secretly?” He squeezed the very slight curve at Jess’ waist. 

“Yours is much more …” Jess made a waving motion with his hands. 

“Yeah, well, I have more body fat, which squishes better, functioning lungs, and a lot of practise at this.” Dario stroked Jess’ sides and kissed his ear. 

Jess saw his own scowl in the mirror. “My lungs are fine.”

Dario sighed. His breath was hot over Jess’ ear. “This is about as tight as I can pull you, anyway. The laces aren’t right. See? Like this.” 

Jess felt lines being traced on his back. A ‘V’ shape. 

“They should be more like this.”

Straight lines, now. The touch of Dario’s fingers made Jess shiver. He looked back into the mirror, saw Dario’s smiler curl even sharper, his eyes darken. 

He pressed back a little, just to see, and Dario pushed his erection against Jess’ arse in response. 

Was it this sudden rush of arousal that was making Jess feel a little light-headed, or the corset?

“How are you so fucking toppy today with Khalila newly-home?”

That made surprise flash across Dario’s face, as if he hadn’t quite realised how he was behaving. 

“I just wanted to see what you’d look like in a waspie. And it’s good.” He kissed Jess’ ear again, then slid his tongue into the sensitive spot behind Jess’ ear and Jess had to bite his tongue to keep himself quiet. 

Breathing was easier with the corset unlaced, but it also meant Dario moving away. Jess fought the urge to wrap his arms around himself to make up for the double lack of the nice hugging sensation. 

Then he got distracted because Dario went to his knees in front of him again and undid the flies on his trousers. 

Finally! Jess cheered mentally. 

But no, damn it!  _ More  _ measuring?

“What’s that for?” he complained, as Dario put one end of the tape just below his nipple again, which poked eagerly into his undershirt.

“Torso length. Bend your leg up.” Dario’s hand, very warm on his bare thigh, but moving down, damn it, entirely the wrong way, down to wrap around the back of Jess’ knee and pull it encouragingly. “You need to be able to bend in a longer one.” His lips were so close to Jess’ crotch that Jess fancied he could feel the air as he spoke. Maybe he could; his underwear was starting to get damp. 

He could hear the arousal in Dario’s voice now, too. He really was showing unusual restraint, not diving straight for Jess’ dick. 

Another corset. Still not a waistcoat. This one was definitely longer, as Dario had said. It would have sat under the waistband of his trousers, if he was wearing any. 

As Dario tugged the laces, he pulled Jess backwards against him. Jess ground his arse against Dario’s crotch unmercifully, relishing the one or two quiet puffs of air that won him. 

“We can have it this way for a chance, if that’s what you're after.”

Dario licked his lips and bit Jess where his shoulder met his neck. “Not in a long one, though. It’s trickier, getting fucked in one of these.” He tugged at the bottom of the corset, as if settling it better, and his fingers ghosted gently over Jess’ bulging underwear. Jess groaned and shivered. 

“You’ve been fucked in one of these, then?”

Dario laughed. “I’ve been fucked in most of them.” He pressed them even closer together and cupped Jess’ balls through his thin underwear. 

Jess groaned again and tried to contort himself more into Dario’s grip, twisted his head to clumsily kiss the side of Dario’s face. He felt boiling hot and tightly-wound. “C’mon, you bastard. Going to show me what it’s like to be fucked in a corset, are you? You know I can take it.”

“I’ve got a better idea.”

They both jumped and jumped apart at the sound of Khalila’s voice. She stuck her head around the doorway and smiled at them. “Why don’t you get Jess into a nice corset waistcoat, like he wants, darling?”

Dario licked his lips and then bit his lower lip, quite hard. 

“But I had plans.” He sounded sulky. 

Khalila nodded, the picture of earnestness. “Oh, obviously. Fun-sounding plans, too. But, um, that wasn’t all I heard.” She leaned a little more around the door, in a way that made it quite clear she was concealing something in one hand. 

“I heard Jess enquire why on earth you were being so toppy. And I thought about that. Maybe you wanted to be. A little palate cleanser after greeting me so nicely last night.”

Jess snuck a glance sideways and saw that Dario’s gaze was flickering at dizzying speed between that hidden hand and Khalila’s face. 

“But then I reminded myself that you’re very used to pretending that you don’t want things. Especially with our beloved Jess. So I had a little look around, and sure enough, out of your whole entire corset collection, Dario, darling, you put one aside.”

She glided into the room, then, tiny and wonderful and pulling their attention like a magnet. In her hand, she held a corset. Unlike most of the others in the huge closet, this one was plain. It was made from brown leather, and it looked well-worn. 

She stopped just in front of Dario and with a tiny hand motion, offered him the corset. He took in a breath. Both of his hands were clasped behind his back, Jess saw, though he didn't know whether that was a rejection of the mysterious corset or just a reaction to Khalila. 

“Why don’t you get Jess into the corset that he wants,” Khalila said, staring up directly into Dario’s eyes, “and then he’ll get you into the one that you want?”

Dario nodded. His hands squeezed even more tightly together behind his back. 

“All right.” His voice trembled as he turned back to face Jess. The long corset came off quickly, especially since Jess had flipped the front fastenings free before Dario had finished loosening the laces. “Shirt back on.”

“Trousers, too,” Khalila said, as she dragged the chair to one side and sat down on it. “Don’t you think, darling? Don’t you think he should be properly dressed?”

Jess wasn’t a massive fan of this sort of intense, secretive mind-game, so he quickly yanked his own trousers on. He did let Dario do the shirt, though. 

“Are you all right?” he asked, as he watched Dario’s fingers tremble a little on the buttons. 

Dario gave him a surprised look. “Fine. Just. You know. Bit of embarrassment.”

Jess frowned at that. He’d thought that Dario was over being able to bottom to him. Even to submit, which was definitely the direction this looked like it was going in.

“What’s this corset, then?” he demanded. 

“Yes. Tell him,” Khalila said in a delighted tone. When Jess spared her a glance, he saw that she was sitting cross-legged and hunched over, her way of trying to ignore her own arousal. Was  _ anybody  _ going to get to come today?

“What color do you want?” Dario said, instead of responding. 

Jess shrugged. “Blue.”

This corset went on quickly. Same structure as before. Jess was getting the hang of this; he quickly did up the front fastenings and made sure to inhale hard as Dario tugged the laces. That made him cough a bit. 

“There,” Dario said, patting his shoulders bracingly. “What do you think?”

Despite himself, despite his steadily growing desire to shove Dario and see what he’d do as a way of making the atmosphere in the room make some sense again, Jess found himself lingering in the mirror. 

The blue and grey panelled waistcoat corset gave him less of a waist than the preceding ones - barely any, really - but it just smoothed everything out nicely and contributed to the illusion that his shoulders were wider than they really were. He could barely feel a sense of restriction when he inhaled. 

“I really like it.” An angle of attack popped into his head, and so he turned to Dario and said, “It’s nice to get what I want eventually.”

Dario’s face flushed. 

Jess held out his hand for that brown corset, and Khalila obligingly leaned forwards to pass him it. 

The leather was soft but stained - cracked a little, too, in certain places. It smelt like cigar smoke and maybe a little of booze. Rather than fancy ribbon, this corset was laced with what appeared to be extremely thick boot laces. 

“It doesn’t have any front bits.” Jess waved it around a bit, checking to make sure the clasps weren’t just well-hidden.

“No.” Dario’s face was very red, now. “In theory, with front clasps, you can get in and out of it yourself. This one, I need another person.”

Ooh. That strummed arousal in Jess’ groin. What an excellent, blatant way to put Dario in a submissive headspace. 

He held out the corset and raised his eyebrows, and Dario shuffled around until he was facing away from Jess. 

Jess yanked his shoulder until he adjusted. Right in front of the mirror. Perfect. 

“Clothes off, then,” he said, lightly. 

Watching Dario watch himself in a mirror was always entertaining and illuminating. He could never resist looking at himself, even when, like now, it didn’t seem entirely enjoyable to do so. 

Trousers went first, then his own waistcoat corset, then his shirt, then, to Jess’ mild surprise, his undershirt. 

“Bare skin, for this one?”

Dario nodded just a bit. He appeared to be staring at the semi-safe area of his own chest. “Not the best way to wear it. But I like it.”

“All right, then.”

Jess awkwardly looped the leather corset around Dario’s chest, where Dario held it in place. Those massive laces made Jess a bit suspicious. He was going to get friction burns on his fingers, wasn’t he?

“How tightly should these be pulled?” he’d asked Khalila in order to elicit a sensible response, but Dario answered,

“All the way,” in a husky voice instead. A very Dario response, and Khalila didn’t say a word to counter it. Just looked at Dario with big, dark, hungry eyes. 

Jess raised his eyebrows, but followed the instruction. He had to really yank, and the feeling of Dario trying to hold his balance, the push and pull of weight, really did nothing to alleviate his frankly desperate state of arousal. 

By the time he was done, when the two sides of the corset met so neatly that he could barely even see the thick brown laces against Dario’s bare back, Dario’s waist looked a  _ lot _ more like those workers he saw at the peepshows, and he was breathing shallowly. In the mirror, his eyes were huge and black and his underwear was almost see-through with seeping arousal. 

“Fucking hell, Dario.” He put his hands around Dario’s shrunken waist and shook him. “Is this what you wear when you go roaming around, is it?”

Khalila made a tiny satisfied noise in the background. Jess wasn't going to give himself any points for that obvious deduction. It was beaten-up leather, and he knew Dario’s wilder tastes. He’d not really joined in wit them before now, but, well, there was a first time for everything. 

“Can you breathe all right in it?” he asked, watching Dario’s chest rise and fall. 

Dario nodded. “I like it.”

Jess rolled his eyes at the hidden answer there, and grabbed Dario’s throat in a quick, rough snatch. “Of course you do.” Leave it to Dario to find ways around Khalila’s ‘no choking’ hard limit. 

“Right, then.” He yanked Dario by the corset. This was fun. It made him much easier to move. He shoved him down over the table, and watched with interest as the tight corset completely changed the way Dario bent down. “I don’t need to ask whether this is one of the corsets you’ve been fucked in.”

Dario nodded anyway. His hands roamed aimlessly; next to his torso, gripping the sides of the table, gripping the other end of it. 

Fuck, that was hot. He wanted to be told where to put his hands. 

“Put your hands above your head and keep them there.” Jess stripped both their underwear off as quickly as possible, and prayed that he didn’t orgasm the moment he entered Dario. 

“This is a very nice welcome home,” he heard Khalila muse under her breath. 


	9. Pet Play - Santi/Dario

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is something I wrote SO LONG AGO. It feels like a cop-out when Kinktober is supposed to be fresh stuff, but like, I've never posted it! So it's fair game! 
> 
> Warning for power play dynamics - although Dario's very much an adult here, you might still find Santi/Dario a bit squicky, and they are playing within a D/s framework
> 
> Full content tags: petplay, puppy play, nudity, D/s, non-verbal communication, collar and leash, breath play mention, brief allusion to daddy/boy play
> 
> Let me know if I should add any more!

Dario was very quiet, Santi noticed. And he kept touching his collar. 

“Are you all right?” He ran one hand up Dario’s back to squeeze the nape of his neck. “Do you want the leash off?”

Dario shook his head, eyes widening, giving a very faint whine. Santi narrowed his eyes in thought. Now, this could just be his own inclinations, but … Dario was determinedly non-verbal, even when usually he’d be talking, and, a whine was a whine, really, but …

He loped the leash around his hand a few more times and used the taut leash to drag Dario onto his lap for a kiss. He guided Dario down to his neck, and then gently touched the side of Dario’s face so that he could feel his mouth and his pulse and not miss anything as he said, very softly,

“That’s it, pet.” He felt Dario quiver, and smiled with satisfaction. He ran a finger lightly around Dario’s neck, around the collar. “You like being on the leash, don’t you? Does it make you feel secure? There won’t be any running off into dangerous situations because I’ve got hold of you.” After a moment, he put his hand back into Dario’s hair and started trailing his nails over the soft skin behind Dario’s ear. “Nice scratches for a good little pet,” he whispered in Dario’s other ear. 

Dario froze. Said “I-” and then stopped. Santi looked at him, at those big, scared dark eyes. 

“I know what you want,” he said, keeping his hand moving in Dario’s hair. “Are you going to be a good pet for me?”

Dario nodded and, with a determined look on his face, leaned in to give Santi a sloppy lick to his cheek. Santi laughed and batted him away.

“Down, boy.” 

Dario went tense again at that, but judging by his body language it was in a good way this time. He looked delighted. Almost disbelieving. He whined and nuzzled Santi’s neck. Santi patted and rubbed his back as he might pat a dog’s. 

“You’ve not done this before, have you?” 

Dario shook his head. Nibbled Santi’s neck. 

“You’re doing very well.” They sat like that for a few more moments, until Santi could feel Dario fidgeting. “Should we go for a,” he lowered his voice conspiratorially, “ _ walk _ ?”

Dario made a noise best described as a squeak, licked Santi’s face again, and flailed and wriggled around on Santi’s lap until he slid to the floor with a bump. He immediately hooked his chin over the edge of the seat and whined. 

Santi couldn't help but smile. Dario had obviously had dogs, somewhere in his strange noble upbringing. 

“All right, all right, I’m coming.” He stood up. Dario knelt up and pawed at Santi, headbutting him too. Santi raised his eyebrows. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been accidentally hit in the balls by an enthusiastic pet, but there was mischief glittering in Dario’s dark eyes and he was pretty sure it wouldn’t be an accident if it happened. “Enough. Down.”

Dario dropped immediately, bare belly to the floor, pressing his cheek and lips to Santi’s shoes. Fuck, that was a turn-on. 

“Good boy,” he breathed, bending down to curl his fingers into Dario’s hair. “Doing what you’re told.” He rubbed Dario’s bowed back again, then slapped his side. “Come on. Up you get.”

Dario rose to his hands and knees. His mouth was open and his eyes were bright and focused, but still, he was quiet. Santi could think of a few reasons for that; everything from ‘haven’t really decided what I want to be’ to ‘too embarrassed to bark in public’. Just in case he’s holding back on Santi’s behalf somehow, Santi strokes Dario’s cheek and says,

“Make as much or as little noise as you want to, pet.”

Dario looked up at him and looked like he might be about to burst, but nothing came out and he went red and shoved his face hard into Santi’s leg. 

“It takes practise.” Santi stroked his hair. “Try it out on your own a few times. See what you like.”

Dario nodded against his leg, then pulled away and nosed Santi’s hand with a whine. It was the hand with the lead in. Santi laughed again.

“How do you like this, pet? Loose? Or tight?” 

Dario wriggled all over at ‘tight’, and lunged at Santi’s hand to lick it and nibble it. Santi slapped his cheek gently, and he retreated.

“Puppy teeth,” Santi said with a sigh, then carefully pulled on the leash until it was taut. Until he could feel Dario’s every movement, and Dario could feel his. Connected. “Come on then. Good boy. Off we go.”

* * *

He starts off slow. It turns out not to be necessary though; Dario might be new to pretending like this, but he’s certainly not new to the concept of crawling on a leash, thank you Khalila, and within a few steps he’s comfortably at Santi’s side. More than at his side, actually; he’s trotting ahead and wriggling his bottom like there’s a wagging tail there somewhere. 

Santi rolls his eyes and loosens the leash. When he’s behind Dario, a tight leash will pull his collar either against the front of his neck, restricting his breath, or against the side, restricting blood flow. 

Dario looks back over his shoulder and grabs the loosened leash in his mouth and growls. Shit, that’s adorable. 

“Sit.” He says it as an order, and Dario’s got a lot of practise following orders too, so, after an adorably obvious moment of ‘Wait, don’t sit like that,’ he rests back on his heels and looks up at Santi with an inquisitive head tilt. 

Santi sinks his fingers into Dario’s hair and pulls it tight for a brief moment, a quick little reward. 

“First things first, don’t growl at me, pet.” 

Dario looks bashful. 

“Secondly, you’re pulling on the leash.” He holds it up in front of Dario, and can’t help but smile when Dario noses it and licks it. “That’s not safe. Don’t do it.”

Now Dario looks mutinous. Santi sighs. Bends down. Grabs the leash and pulls it tight from behind. Dario holds himself still against the tug, increasing the pressure. “I know you like this. Lessened breathing.” Santi loosened it again. “We can have some fun with that later. But not when you’re walking with me. Not when I can’t see your face, and you’re using your hands to walk and can’t tap out as quickly as you might need to. Understand?”

Dario nods. A fraction out of headspace, there. Listening intently. Santi can’t resist the urge to lean in and kiss his parted lips. 

“Sorry,” Dario whispers, in the shared space between their mouths. Santi shakes his head and kisses him again.

“Nothing to be sorry for. That’s why I’m at the other end of the leash. You’re doing so, so well.”

Dario whines, thin and needy, and Santi is about two seconds from pinning him to the floor there and then, but then Dario blinks and grins and licks Santi’s face again. Santi jerks back and stands up and Dario chases after him, hard puffs of air coming out that could be laughter, could be barks. 

“Such a naughty boy,” Santi said affectionately, and lets Dario plaster his outstretched hand in wet licks. “Right. Let’s do some training.”

Dario stops and tilts his head and sinks slowly back onto his heels again. 

“I thought you’d like that. Nice bit of structure for you.” He wraps the loose leash around and between his fingers, a little thinking tic. “Walk level with my heels. If you’re too far back or forwards, I’ll verbally correct you. If you don’t listen …” He trailed off and regarded Dario thoughtfully. Whether a postulant, a Scholar or a slut, Dario had always viewed punishments as something to rebel against. “No. You’re too adorable to punish.”

Dario preened. 

“You’ll know you’ve misbehaved when I correct you. You’ll get something nice at the end of the walk if I don’t need to correct you much. Say, more than twice.”

Dario nodded, licked his lips, and made a soft woofing sound. Instantly his face flushed. It was almost more speaking the word than a true imitation, but he’d tried. 

Santi drops to his knees and grabs Dario’s head in both hands, then runs his hands down to rub and pat at his back and sides. 

“Look at you! Talking to me! Such a good boy!” He’s raised the pitch of his voice, and the volume, a real enthusiastic praising, and surprise flashes stark across Dario’s face. Then he tries to ‘woof’ again, and burrows his head into Santi’s chest and licks his shirt. 

“What a good boy,” Santi says, softer this time, fisting his hand in Dario’s hair. Dario whines. Which is unfair because that sound seems to have a direct line straight to Santi’s cock. He shakes himself back into concentration. “Do you want to practise walking with me properly? Or should we go and sit down together?”

Dario carefully picks up the loose leash in his teeth and tugs at it, looking at Santi with eager eyes. Santi smiles. 

“Now, you’re going to be a good boy, aren’t you?” he said teasingly, as he stands up again. Dario lets out a sharp, high-pitched sound somewhere between a human “yep” and an attempt at a yip. 

He walks faster this time, striding around the dungeon. People have been watching them ever since Dario first walked up to him, but now a few soldiers Santi recognises from his older forays into this come up to him with delighted expressions.

They pet Dario’s head and neck and back, and he behaves very well and only licks them a little bit. But then, he loves being touched in any state of mind. 

“Aren’t you a darling?”

“He’s such a good boy! You wouldn’t believe he’s so new. So little.” That from Sergeant Amupanda, who’s crouched down and practically cuddling Dario. He licks her cheek once or twice, little, nervous licks, and then she grabs his chin and pulls him in for a kiss. Dario melts against her and shuts his eyes, because Dario will melt for anyone who isn’t actively a threat, dammit. 

Possession rises hot and violent in Santi’s veins, and before he can control himself he’s grabbed the leash and tightened it, so that Dario can feel it pressing on the soft nape of his neck. Dario’s not with Khalila now, whose admittedly impressive possessiveness takes different forms and allows different behaviour. He’s with Santi. 

Dario turns to him, soft and inquisitive, and he schools his face, but Amupanda is already getting to her feet. 

“Apologies. I’d forgotten what you’re like with your pups.”

"Sorry," he says to Dario, when he notices the glare he's getting. "I forgot to tell you not to kiss anyone else."

Dario shrugs, the flash of anger of the unfair reprimand fading from his eyes. 

Still, Santi strokes the back of his neck until his shoulder soften. "I'm sorry," he says again. "You've been very, very good for me."

Dario gives him a wonky little smirk and turns his face to kiss Santi’s hand. 

“Have I?” 

It’s a blatant push for validation, and if they were in Dario’s territory, Santi would smirk back and not give him the satisfaction, but they’re huddled on the floor of the dungeon and Dario’s just been pushing his boundaries and laying himself bare with a brand new experience and Santi would give him virtually anything, right now. 

“You have been wonderful,” he says, and leans in to kiss Dario’s cheek. “So good. So quick. So clever.” Each piece of praise a new kiss, until Dario chases his lips and fits them together and whimpers with satisfaction as Santi leans in harder, pressing him back against the rough brick wall.

“You’ll be the death of me, pet,” he whispers, pulling away just a little. He slides one hand down Dario’s body and confirms that Dario is hard and wet in his underwear. “One more walk for me, back to where we started.” He rubs Dario’s cock through the thin layer of his underwear. “Ready?”

Dario gamely swings himself forwards back onto his hands and knees. He can never hide how he feels when he’s like this, and so Santi sees him wince as his knees touch the floor. His shoulders are tense.

He wants to tell Dario to stand up and walk, not to cause himself unnecessary pain, but he already knows that won’t go well. There’s one option that might work.

“Are you a tired puppy?” He pulls Dario’s head gently against his thigh. “You’ve done so well on your first ever outing. Let daddy carry you home.”

Dario whines, very, very faintly, and sits back on his heels. He licks Santi’s hand, and briefly, just for a second that tantalises both of them, sucks on Santi’s fingers.

He paws at Santi’s hip, his expression clearly asking how on earth they’re going to do this. 

Santi rolls his eyes, and crouches down in front of Dario. “Get on my back, pet.”


	10. Religious Play - Dario & Santi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This doesn't reeeaaaally fit the prompt, I don't think, but oh well. 
> 
> Full content tags for this chapter: 
> 
> **Embarrassment, Alcohol Usage, Drunkenness, Religion Kink, Catholicism, Blasphemy, Power dynamics, Flirting, Anal beads, References to anal sex activities**
> 
> Let me know if I need to add any more!

Dario thought he’d got away with it. Just his and Khalila’s little secret. 

He’d reckoned without Santi, of course. Somehow he always failed to properly account for the commander. 

So one night, when Jess, Glain and Wolfe were away in America and Thomas had got up from his seat to wait patiently in the bar queue, he was taken aback when Santi fixed him with an intent look and said,

“Open your shirt.”

Adrenalin hit him so hard that his fingertips fizzed. “Sorry, I only answer commands like that from one person,” he said, trying to summon his typical sharp smile. Shit, he’d had a little too much to drink for this conversation. 

Santi gave him a look. “What about if I said, ‘Dario, friend, I’m interested in your necklace. May I examine it?’”

Dario’s hand flew to the bulge underneath his very nice black silk shirt. “I trust you know what a rosary looks like well enough.” He tossed his head disparagingly. 

“Mm.” Santi’s gaze shifted, like a striking hawk or a pouncing lion, and he reached inside Dario’s shirt. 

Dario was proud of himself. Even as his brain tried to throw itself out of the nearest window at the touch of Santi’s rough fingers against his bare skin, he still moved to try and tear Santi’s hand away. 

Except that Santi’s free hand closed around his wrist and exerted gentle but firm pressure, and suddenly Dario couldn’t move that hand. 

He tried! He really did! He strained, but all Santi did was raise his eyebrows. 

Oh God. What could Dario do, against such a casual show of strength, other than sit back in his chair, weak with arousal, and let Santi do what he wanted?

Now, if this was the sort of tale that Khalila whispered into his ear, Santi would … hmm, would rip his shirt wide open, maybe? Which would be a pity, given its quality, but a worthy sacrifice. 

However, because this wasn’t that delicious fantasy world, all Santi did was carry on reaching inside Dario’s shirt until he’d hooked out what he wanted. 

“See?” Dario managed. “Nothing special.” 

Santi didn’t show any reaction to his words at all, and instead lifted the necklace up on his palm for a closer look. There was an unmistakably amused look in his eyes. 

Nothing special. Fifty-nine red beads. Crucifix. String. Entirely normal. He’d worn it outside his shirt quite a lot and no-one had looked twice. 

Santi was looking twice, all right. He was slowly running one finger up the string of beads with a steadily growing smirk on his face. 

The beads got larger, you see. Largest either side of the crucifix. 

Not theologically correct, that. 

“I trust you know how to use that,” Santi said. His grin was wicked.

Perspiration prickled on Dario’s temples and dampened his palms. How the fuck did he answer that?

“Yes,” he ventured. “Of course I do.”

Santi jiggled the necklace in his hand until he was holding the crucifix between his finger and thumb. Then he raised his eyebrows.

Shit.

Dario scraped his childhood memories.

“I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth ...” He somehow stumbled through the rest of the Apostle’s Creed, his face hot under Santi’s penetrating gaze. 

Then it got approximately ten thousand times worse, because Santi moved on to the Lord’s Prayer, and Dario had to get to the other end of _that_ , too, with a tongue that felt like lead, with Santi’s eyes never relenting for a moment. 

His heart was racing and his mouth was dry, and most horrifyingly of all, his cock was getting hard. 

This felt more blasphemous than wearing the damned thing in the first place.

“Mm. You use this a lot, I’m sure.” Santi let it fall back against Dario’s chest, and patted it in a friendly manner. His hand burned, and Dario sank his teeth hard into his cheek to avoid reacting to it.

Alcohol, arousal and sheer embarrassment conspired to make him throw someone else under the heat of that gaze instead: “Not me.”

Santi’s eyebrows rose again, slowly this time, transforming his forehead into a mass of surprised wrinkles. 

“I wouldn’t have thought this was very … Khalila …” He picked it up again, keeping his fingers on the larger beads. 

Dario had _definitely_ had too much alcohol. His entire body felt hot and light and fizzy. A small part of him watched with dismay as the rest of him snorted and said,

“That’s not very big, you know.”

Santi’s grin returned, splitting his weathered face. “Is it not?” His foot nudged Dario’s under the table. 

Was that deliberate? Dario had no idea. It seemed incredibly unlikely, but then so did … all of this interaction. He froze. It seemed the safest option. 

Then, to his boundless relief and equally boundless regret, Thomas appeared in his peripheral vision and put his horrendously expensive glass of wine in front of him. 

“Oh, that’s a nice necklace, Dario,” he said, settling down with an answering creak of the booth. 

Santi turned to Thomas and accepted his beer. “It is, isn’t it? I was just asking him about it.” Without even looking, he casually pulled the neck of Dario’s shirt out and dropped the necklace back inside.

Dario made an incoherent sound and gulped his wine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone is like me and really, really bad at reading subtext and innuendo, explanation below: 
> 
> The rosary is in fact anal beads, belonging to Khalila (are they symbolic or are they actually used? Whichever one you want, your squick may vary) and Santi has figured that out. And is also flirting in a fairly 'I'm in charge' way.


	11. Ball-busting - Dario/Santi/Wolfe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, this doesn't really fit the prompt, but hey. Another old unpublished cheat fill day.
> 
> This is part of a kinky sex scene from a modern AU I haven't quite written plot enough of to post yet. Sugar baby college student Dario finds a (sugar) Daddy in Nic. With accompanying Wolfe because .... I can't not. Can you separate Wolfe and Santi?? I am scared of the power of anyone who says yes. 
> 
> Full content warnings: BDSM, D/s, verbal humiliation, verbal degradation, masochism, sadism, Daddy/boy dynamic, threesome, power dynamics, age gap, (Dario's like at least 20 though don't worry), impact play, genital torture

Nic was breathing far too deeply and steadily for it to be automatic. Dario looked at him, cataloguing everything. The heavy, spiked stretcher on Nic's balls, the pressure of the sound in his cock, the weights hanging from his nipples, the pressure of the large steel plug up his arse, the way that the spider gag held his mouth open. The weights on Nic’s nipples swung wildly, and his stretched balls set up a steady pendulum motion. 

Dario winced despite himself as Chris picked up speed to chase his orgasm. Nic started groaning, long and constant. 

“That’s it,” Chris said breathlessly. “That’s what I wanted to hear. No holding back, Nic. Just react.”

By the time that Chris shoved himself down Nic’s throat and came with a grunt, Nic was not only groaning but panting too, his hands in tight fists on the carpet. Chris stayed where he was, pushed tight into Nic’s mouth, hands tracing aimless patterns over Nic’s tense shoulders. His hips still rocked gently, pushing Nic back and forth.

“Dario.”

Dario jumped. 

“Yes, sir?”

“He needs more. Go and get me the rubber paddle.”

Dario dashed off, and grabbed the requested implement. When he returned, Chris was stood behind Nic, tugging on the ball stretcher and listening intently to the grunting sounds that action was yanking out of Nic. He held out his hand for the paddle without even looking at Dario. 

“Are you hard?” he demanded suddenly. 

“Y-Yes?”

“Go and fuck his mouth, then.”

Nervously, Dario unzipped his jeans and walked to the relevant end of Nic.

Sliding his cock into the warm, wet mouth felt so good that he moaned, but it felt strange without Nic’s reaction. 

He made the mistake of looking down at Nic, and meeting Nic’s eyes. 

That wasn’t Nic’s usual expression. 

Nic wasn’t focused on him. 

(Daddy wasn't focused on him.)

It was ridiculous, but realising that made him feel a little chilly inside. He looked at the wall instead, just past Chris, and imagined what Nic might be saying, if he could.

He’d probably say, “Shut up, or you’ll get a slap.” Or maybe “What are you making a fuss about? God, you’re pathetic.”

A loud voice in his head tried to remind him that Nic's softer side was just as likely to come out as his harsh side, but Dario needed to _not think_ about being taken care of right now, when that wasn't his damned _job_. 

Nic being shoved forwards onto him jolted him out of his thoughts. Chris had started swinging. The smack of the rubber was vicious and thrilling, and it helped Dario to get back into the right headspace.

For a little while, anyway. 

It wasn’t until Nic shifted his weight carefully and reached to squeeze Dario’s ankle that Dario realised he wasn’t thrusting very hard anymore. That he might even have started to soften.

“Stop pawing at your boy, Nic,” Chris ordered, and aimed the next swing straight at Nic’s balls. That made him cry out and grip Dario’s ankle hard to keep his balance. 

Stop being a distraction, Dario told himself. He patted Nic’s cheek briskly, and bit his tongue, hard, on saying “I’m fine, Daddy,” like he really wanted to. That would  _ not _ make Nic think he was fine. 

“Chris?”

“Yes?”

“Could you talk to me?” Oh shit, he sounded exactly as pathetic as he’d feared. 

Chris looked at him - that terrifying, scalpel look. He raised an eyebrow. “Never fucked your Daddy before, boy?”

Dario’s cock perked up at that damned word. 

“Not like this, sir.”

“No.” Chris nodded and hit Nic again, almost absentmindedly. His long hair was falling from its tie with his efforts, soft greying frizz slowly dampening around his temples. “What sort of talking? I suppose you want praise?” His tone dripped with disdain. 

“It doesn’t have to be,” Dario assured him. 

Chris smacked Nic’s arse again, low, near the thigh. The blow was softer than before, but Dario could see the paddle was striking the same spot again and again. Shit, that was going to build like a bitch. 

“Well, you’re not really fucking him, to start with.”

Dario blinked and waited for that to make sense. 

“I am. You’re just what I’m using to do it.”

_ Oh _ . A wave of arousal washed warmly over Dario and he pushed himself firmly into Nic’s mouth to recover from it. 

“I’m picky about my tools, normally. I suppose you’ll do. Good enough to get the result I want.”

“Thank you, sir,” Dario said, automatically. 

“Don’t thank me. Do your job. It’s not complicated.”

“Yes, sir.” 

That helped. 


	12. Older Woman, Begging - Scholar Parker/Khalila

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full content tags and things: 
> 
> **Nudity, embarrassment, scratching, sensation play, power dynamics, blindfolded, bottom Khalila, vaguely submissive Khalila, medical role play (a little bit. maybe.)**
> 
> Time for me to talk in the notes again. 
> 
> The other character in this will probably be unknown to most readers: Scholar Medica Parker only appears for two pages in chapter thirty of Smoke and Iron. 
> 
> Why did I pick her? Because Khalila describes her in a very unusually intense and poetic way (quoted below), and I henceforth decided that Khalila is experiencing an IMMEDIATE crush on the older woman. And now I ship them. 
> 
> "She was a commanding older woman with sweeping walnut hair, eyes the colour of the open sea, and an attitude that Khalila could best liken to that of an angry, wounded lion. She took Wolfe's letter, ripped it open with a sharply pointed fingernail lacquered crimson, and read the contents once rapidly, then twice slowly, before she spoke."

Even though it wasn't at all cold in the room, Khalila shivered as she sat down on the hard examining table. Hygienic single-use paper rustled underneath her bare legs and bottom. 

Despite previous enthusiastic agreement to this scenario, she kept her arms tightly folded across her chest and her knees pressed together. Her skin prickled. The nape of her neck prickled especially hard; she’d taken off her headscarf but bundled her hair up in a messy bun to keep it out of the way. 

"You're not cold, are you?" Scholar Medica Parker swept in, and Khalila forgot how to think straight for a moment. 

The older women looked stunning. She was wearing a loose Medica robe, thrown aside over her shoulders like a cape, and a dark blue trouser suit underneath. Her sleeves were rolled up, and her forearms looked strong and sinewy. Walnut brown hair fell in flawless waves to frame her sharp, determined face. Her eyes looked even fiercer than normal underneath heavy smokey make-up, and her throat and wrists jangled with heavy golden jewellery. 

Khalila squeezed her arms even more tightly around her body, feeling its small size and fragility in a way that she didn't usually allow herself to acknowledge. 

"I'm not cold," she said, and cleared her throat hard. 

"Good. Lie back, then." Parker gave her a brisk business-like smile and headed to a cabinet at the back of the room. The sound of running water made Khalila jump. She still wasn't lying down. She couldn't quite bring herself to uncurl.

"Come on, girl. I don't have all day. I've seen hundreds of nude bodies in my time. You're nothing special."

Something quivered inside Khalila at that. Slowly she lay back. The paper rustled even more loudly, and jammed itself awkwardly underneath her body as she settled. 

Parker still wasn't looking. She was rummaging in the cabinet. Yet Khalila was so aware of every inch of her skin that the air itself felt like fingers running over her body. 

"Right, then. If you could shut your eyes for me." 

Oh. Khalila's heart fluttered. Feeling so exposed was bad enough. Being unable to see as well?? 

"Must I?" she said, before she could quite stop herself. 

"Yes. It's necessary for an effective check of your movement and sensory functioning."

"Oh, right. That makes sense." 

"I'm so pleased I have your approval." Parker's voice, heavy with sarcasm, made Khalila flush hot all over. 

"Sorry," she blurted, and shut her eyes with the hurry of a hiding child. 

"Right, then. First I'm going to test your movement, sensation and circulation in your hand and fingers. Which hand do you write with?" 

Khalila held up her left hand. She felt stupid, waving it in the air like that, but thankfully Parker quickly took hold of her wrist and rested one finger lightly on the back of her hand.

“Can you wiggle your fingers for me? And then make a fist? Perfect. Now open the hand again.”

Parker’s warm, dry finger trailed up Khalila’s little finger. “A lot of people are slightly hypermobile. I’m going to pull your little finger this way,” she tugged, and very gently bent Khalila’s finger back a bit, “And you need to stop me when it gets uncomfortable. Just a little pet check of mine.”

“Right.” Oh, dear. Khalila already wished that she could see. She scrunched her eyes even more tightly shut for a moment, but stopped when it gave her a faint headache. “Stop,” she said, when the strain in her finger started to burn. 

“Good.” Parker returned her finger to its natural position, and held all four fingers together for a moment. “Does that feel all right?”

Khalila nodded. 

“Are you sure? You frowned, just then.”

Khalila smiled, taken aback and pleased by the realisation of how closely Parker must be paying attention to her. “I was just making sure I kept my eyes shut.”

She jumped as Parker’s hand landed on her face, cupped over her eyes and nose. Her palm was very warm and smelled faintly of some floral soap. “Is it easier with your eyes covered?”

Khalila made a thoughtful noise. That felt rather like cheating. She didn’t even need to keep them closed if they were covered. “No, it’s fine.”

“Khalila.” Parker’s voice was suddenly stern and business-like again. “This isn’t intended as a challenge. I know you’re capable of far greater feats than that. Having one sense diminished increases your attention to the others. That’s all. So if it’s easier, I will get you a sleep mask.” 

Khalila bit her lip. Shame was an absurd feeling to have over one comment, yet here it was coiling in her gut. Now she felt like she was cheating _and_ being a disappointment. 

“The sleep mask, then,” she said, and heard some of her silly emotions spill over into her voice. 

“Good.”

Khalila waited, tracking Parker’s footsteps, her jangling jewellery, and the sound of a drawer opening, yet still jumped when the soft sleep mask was laid over her eyes. 

“Head up.” Parker tied the mask. Khalila found herself relaxing a little as the daylight disappeared from her peripheral vision and the mask came in tightly enough that she had to close her eyes. 

Blindfolded now, she thought to herself. She wasn’t a fool, nor was she entirely innocent in this sphere. Sleep mask or blindfold, checking her senses or sensory deprivation - it was all petty semantics once it had begun. 

That thought lit a small, warm flame low in her belly - but no sooner had she registered and enjoyed the sensation than she was metaphorically slapped with the reminder that she was entirely naked. 

Instinctively she drew up her legs and tried to wrap her arms around herself again. The paper rustled loudly underneath her on the examining table. Some of it tore with her abrupt movement. Her left hand jolted, caught immovably in Parker’s warm, firm grasp. 

Ya Allah; if she had known she needed to break a restraint she could have! It was a simple matter of noting their thumb positioning and twisting one’s wrist, but she’d very thoroughly lost the element of surprise now! 

Parker’s other hand stroked her cheek. “Settle.”

Khalila let out a breath that she hadn’t realised she was holding, and had to very rapidly take another one. Her heart was pounding in her ears. 

“Settle,” Parker said again in a low, steady voice. 

Khalila belatedly let her left hand fall limp in Parker’s grip and concentrated on steadying her breathing. 

“I’m sorry!” she said, as soon as she thought her voice might not embarrass her. 

“Not at all. Let me get you a sheet -”

Oh, _more_ failure? “No, really, it’s fine-” She groped in the dark for Parker. 

“No, really, it’s not.” Parker’s voice was very close suddenly, close enough to blow faint puffs of air on Khalila’s face as she spoke. Her breath smelled like mint. Khalila imagined the older woman leaning over her. “You were exceedingly insistent that you not be treated as the Archivist in here, Khalila.”

Khalila made a firm agreeing noise. 

Parker sighed. “That means there is no-one to impress in here. Nothing to achieve, if you can wrap your psyche around that concept.”

Khalila bit her lip again. She accepted and deserved that little barb. 

“Submission is not all struggle and challenge, Khalila, despite anything you might previously have experienced.”

A vivid mental picture flashed into Khalila’s mind of that time she had … _seen ..._ Jess. 

Parker interrupted that memory by pulling a thin sheet up over Khalila's body, stopping it just underneath her collarbone. 

''I don’t want you to have any difficulty doing what I tell you. I just want you to feel. To indulge in sensation. Can you do that?”

As Parker spoke, she rested her hand on Khalila's now-covered stomach. Apparently one layer of cloth was all that was needed to calm Khalila's anxiety, because another warm wave of arousal seeped into her at the firm pressure of Parker's hand. She even found herself wishing the sheet wasn't there. 

And Parker was asking her to indulge in sensation. She giggled and shook her head, then hurriedly added, 

''I can do that,'' in case Parker thought she was shaking her head about continuing. Honesty, however, made her quickly add, ''I'll try my best.''

It was Parker's turn to laugh then, and to curl her hand briefly against Khalila's stomach. ''Of course you will.''

Khalila raised one eyebrow at that tone. 

''Although you're exceptional, I couldn't count the number of intelligent high-achievers I see who try to always do their best at everything. It will wear you out, eventually.''

Khalila raised her other eyebrow, even as she made a polite noise. Lectures on submission and what Parker wanted from a scene, fine. Lectures about Khalila working too hard… well, she got more than enough of them from her friends and family, thank you. 

But Parker left it at that, merely picking up Khalila’s left hand again. 

“Can you tell me which finger I’m touching?”

“Forefinger.”

“Good.” That repeated. Khalila was fairly certain she was answering correctly, even though Parker wasn’t doing them in order. “And now confirm whether I’m touching you with my sharp fingernail, or my flat fingertip.” 

Also easy. 

Parker picked up Khalila’s other hand. Khalila’s abandoned left hand tingled with the ghost of her touch. 

The same procedure again. Wiggling and clenching the fingers. Could Khalila feel this? Tapping at fingers and thumb, one by one. Sharp or flat? What about on this part of the finger?

Parker’s voice was back in that low, soothing register, and it lulled Khalila’s mind into a strange state: not exactly alert, but not sleepy either. Her eyes flickered back and forth under the press of the blindfold.

When Parker lowered Khalila’s right hand back to her side, she pressed a soft kiss to the palm. That resounded through Khalila’s body like a hook, a hot tug in her groin, and before she realised she was going to do it, she’d made a soft sound of surprise. 

“Is that all right?” Parker asked, as if Khalila hadn’t already filled out a long questionnaire on acceptable and unacceptable touching. That double-checking was reassuring. 

Khalila nodded, then said, “Yes,” out loud just in case there was any ambiguity. 

“Good. Do you think that we could perhaps try lowering the sheet now?”

A little frisson of anxiety fizzed across Khalila’s chest, but she let it pass and agreed. 

Her skin rose in goose-pimples as she was bared to the waist, but that was merely a physiological reaction, and it wasn’t accompanied by any psychological alarm. 

She’d been afraid, she realised. Too focused on some of the more extreme scenarios that she’d seen and heard about from Jess and Dario. But Parker was being slow and careful and considerate, and far nicer, to be honest, than Khalila had thought she might be. 

“Now, then,” Parker said, her voice almost back to her usual no-nonsense tone. “The main problem that you complained about was a lack of overall sensitivity. Correct?”

That was right. Nipples were supposed to be an erogenous zone, apparently. She’d never experienced that pleasure. Oral sex took ages, too, even when she was very wet. When she was on her period it got even worse and she needed Dario’s teeth on her clitoris to wring a decent orgasm free. 

She didn’t hold out an awful lot of hope as Parker started to stroke her chest with smooth, firm strokes. Having her breasts touched was arousing, in a kind of body-memory of previous sexual experiences sort of way, but not especially thrilling. Parker’s hand reaching her stomach gave her more of a thrill, a slight catch in her breathing, as her mind and body reacted to the proximity of that touch to her clitoris.

But then to her frustration, Parker just went back up to the top again, running her thumbs along Khalila’s collarbone and descending from there. 

She would have sworn that she’d remained still and silent, as was only polite, but Parker said,

“Patience, Khalila,” in an amused tone of voice.

On the third unremarkable descent, Parker started to tap the skin instead of stroke it, all fingers on both hands hooked into a tight curve.

This was fascinating on Khalila’s collarbones, where the sensation felt hollow and vibrated more widely, but again, didn’t produce any sparks as the taps travelled slowly and meticulously over Khalila’s chest. Mapped every inch of curve on her small breasts. Tapping the nipples … hm. It didn’t in itself produce pleasure, but Khalila found herself much more aware than usual that her nipples were erect, and that knowledge sent another little arrow of arousal between her legs. She had previously even doubted that her body associated erect nipples with sexual excitement, since it could also be caused by chill or simple contact, but apparently that pathway did exist. Interesting. Good. 

Another pass of that tapping. Another. Was it slightly harder? Khalila tried to focus on it, to ignore the pessimistic voice in her head, and the ever-present desire for intellectual stimulation. 

(Said part of her mind had already calculated the tempo of Parker’s fingers and was trying to estimate the measurements of the expanse of skin being touched so that she could produce a hypothesis on how long each journey from neck to waist was taking.)

Parker’s fingers worked their way up to the peaks of her breasts again. This time … well, Khalila still didn’t feel any of that “touches echoing between her legs” thing that romance novels raved about, but she was even more aware of her nipples under Parker’s fingers. Taps morphed into firm squeezes, this time. Khalila wondered what that treatment might feel like on her clitoris, and the pulse of arousal from that consideration made her squirm a little on the table. 

No hiding that motion on this item of furniture; the paper underneath her crackled again.

“Good.” Parker said. 

Khalila jumped at the sound of Parker’s voice. She’d got a little lost in her silent focus. The blindfold really did make everything more intense. 

Or at least, that was the excuse she made to herself seconds later, when Parker dragged her nails over Khalila’s skin and the hot scratch made her yelp with surprise. 

Parker paused, then, as if waiting for Khalila to tell her to stop. 

But it hadn’t even hurt. Not really. Just a fierce kind of heat. 

As Parker started again, scratching down Khalila’s shoulders, Khalila found herself getting distracted for a moment by the sort of delicious daydream that had brought her here in the first place, of the older woman as a lioness, playing with her captive prey. 

Automatically, just as she did when she thought of this at night, she reached down to push her hand between her legs. Her thighs slid together, wet and frictionless under the thin sheet. 

Then Parker grabbed her wrist and set it back down by her side. “I said patience. I thought we were getting somewhere.” 

She scratched up the underside of Khalila’s left breast with just one finger. Khalila wriggled. The burning line was so clear to her that she could visualise it in her mind’s eye. She wanted, suddenly, badly to be able to see again, to watch Parker’s nails sharp against her exposed skin. 

Instead she was stuck in the dark, being denied. At her mercy. 

“We _are_ getting somewhere,” she said, trying to marshall her thoughts and make Parker see the absolute _imperativeness_ of Khalila getting to touch herself right now. “It feels really good.”

Oh. Oh, she might not mock Dario next time he said something banal during sex. Was that the best vocabulary she had available to her?

“It feels good, and so you immediately want to dive in and yank an orgasm out of yourself. Of course.” Parker made a disappointed noise. “Wait.” She striped another hot line up Khalila’s left breast and then started on the right with all five nails at once. 

Khalila made yet another sound that she wasn’t going to mock Dario for next time either, and found herself arching her back hard up towards the nearly-painful intensity. She spread her legs. She hadn’t registered, before, that she’d been keeping them closed. Who knew why? Bad idea. 

Her thighs chilled as air passed over their damp coating. The movement encouraged more liquid to well slowly from her opening, travelling downwards and blotting itself against the paper underneath her. 

A new flush of embarrassment descended on her as she realised that Parker’s fingers weren’t moving. Maybe she was watching. 

If Parker wouldn’t let Khalila touch herself, could she entice Parker to touch her instead?

She spread her legs wider. One pressed against the wall to her right, and the other calf dangled off the table.

Parker’s nails closed around her right breast again, hard, pulling the flesh upwards, somehow stopping right before it would have started to become painful. Khalila caught her breath and when she let it out again, realised just how quickly she was breathing right now. 

Parker let go of her. “If you want to do that, I’ll put you in stirrups.” 

Was that a threat? Khalila couldn’t quite work it out. She hopefully arched her back and rear up towards where she thought Parker might be, but remained frustratingly alone and untouched. She found herself rubbing her cheek against the examining surface, as if she could remove the tightly-tied blindfold that way. 

“Please.”

“Hm. Please what?”

Khalila sighed with frustration. The sigh turned into a hiccuping sort of cry when Parker grabbed both of her ankles and made very short work of strapping them to padded stirrups. 

Khalila could feel them, she knew what they must be, but she definitely hadn’t seen them when she first entered the room. What else had Parker placed within reach?

“Please?” she tried again. The sense of vulnerability from having her legs splayed open like this was incredible, but it didn’t come with the same overlay of terror as mere nudity had at the start of this.

Parker scratched four fingernails down Khalila’s stomach and grabbed at the expanse of Khalila’s pubic hair like she was trying to lift up her entire mound. Khalila gasped. Her clitoris throbbed as if the scratching had indeed continued just that inch or two downwards. 

“I didn’t expect you to beg this quickly.” She was obviously leaning over Khalila’s face again, her minty breath tickling Khalila’s nostrils. “Right, then. You said this was a soft limit.”

One finger slid inside Khalila. She was so wet that she could hear it. 

“Um. Yes.” Again, she tried to collect herself. Her heartbeat rabbited under every inch of her tingling skin, and throbbed between her legs. She would have tightened her thighs for stimulation that way, if Parker hadn't just denied her that too. “It doesn’t work. Penetration. Too tight.”

“But one finger is fine.”

“Mmhm.”” Khalila squirmed. 

“I’m confident I can use one finger to improve your orgasm.”

“ _What_ orgasm?”

That little bit of temper just made Parker chuckle. “Don’t you trust me? You said your nipples were about as erotic as your nose. Haven’t I improved matters?”

Khalila expected more scratching. Instead, shocking, limb-weakening heat enclosed her nipple and most of her right breast. Parker’s tongue danced around the peak. 

And sure enough, the sensitised skin responded in a way that it had never done to Dario’s best attempts. Almost too hot, almost too ticklish, almost too much suction, pressing Parker’s teeth against her small breast. 

Her mind spun out a lightning-quick, hopelessly erotic image of Parker biting her, sinking her teeth into her helpless prey and devouring her, helpless to resist. 

Everything combined and raced south with a vengeance to make her frantically writhe on the examining table and pant as if she might orgasm at any second. Was she orgasming? Was this an unusual orgasm? She felt like she was aflame. 

“Oh, sweetie.” Parker tidied her hair, which had come loose from her bun and threatened to start being a strangle hazard. Khalila had noticed it earlier, tangling under one shoulder, but it had come exceedingly low on her list of priorities. “You just wait until I get you all pumped up.”

Khalila quivered. Yes, she’d ticked an enthusiastic approval to pumping. Nipple, genitals, anywhere. 

But that was when she believed that those methods were her only chance. If Parker could induce such excruciating bliss with just patience and fingernails, what in the world could she do with machines designed to increase blood flow?

“Please,” she said again, and hoped that indicated her agreement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to fulfil the Medical Role-Play/Genital Pumping prompt too. There was supposed to be a Wartenberg wheel, an enema, detailed pumping, and probably electrical play. 
> 
> But Khalila wouldn't shut up and allow herself to be done unto peacefully, so. Maybe that'll happen another time.


	13. Collar & Leash/Bathroom Control - Khalila/Dario

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full chapter tags/warnings:
> 
> **Omorashi, bathroom control, desperation, piss kink, power dynamics, bdsm, Dom/sub, begging, mention of character death, intrusive flashback, high protocol**
> 
> As usual, my brain insisted I write an intro to this. It randomly went a bit angsty, and so if you want to skip that bit entirely, just scroll until you see the big line separation thing. The kink starts there.
> 
> I wrote this too damn fast, maybe I'll come back one day and repost it and give it the flogging ending that it should have had.

When Scholar Medica Parker finally waved Dario away from between her legs, he headed straight to Khalila. 

She knew what his request would be before he even opened his mouth. He was being so careful to hide his discomfort that his movements were stilted. It had, after all, been a long time since his last comfort break, and not so long since his last beverage. 

Regardless, he folded neatly into saikeirei - a reverent seated bow with the head very near the floor and the fingertips touching. It was a formal Japanese position, one of the several which she enjoyed perverting. 

It was yet another way that she and Dario were an odd fit for the high echelons of Alexandrian kinky society, which, if they went in for formalised positions at all, tended to crib from the ancient Persian practise of proskynesis. 

She leaned forwards and rubbed Dario's head as a little reward, enjoying as usual the feel of his loose curls. She'd have his lucious hair to his shoulders or longer, if he would only agree to it. But alas. 

"Your weak-willed husband requests the boon of being excused, oh mestra," he said as he straightened to the neutral seiza sitting position. His face was smeared with evidence of his recent success. She could see trails streaking as far down as his collarbone, which his wide-open shirt bared very nicely.

She nearly laughed and looked confused at his abnormal formality, but just in time she caught the dark, amused flash in his eyes. 

Yes, she'd noticed it too. Every time that Dario came to her to ask permission to be excused to the bathroom, the others in the room reacted. 

Carole Vargas, Litterae Magnus, looked disapproving, which was her stock expression with Dario, and underneath that, she looked a little pitying. 

Greta Jones, Artifex Magnus, looked fascinated, but Khalila knew from personal and professional experience that Greta could paste that expression on with ease and leave it there, utterly impenetrable. 

Scholar Medica Parker just looked amused. Possibly a little gleeful. No, definitely gleeful, she kept ordering Dario to finish the dregs from her tea-cup after all. 

She'd hoped that Dario hadn't been offended or made to feel inferior by their reactions - but she'd misjudged her strutting, glorious royal peacock, of course. 

Mischief fizzed through her veins. Time to give these judgemental older women something to really pull faces about. 

In answer to his dramatically phrased request to be allowed to relieve himself, she replied, "No, you may not."

Shock widened his eyes and wiped his expression clear for a moment, but then he leaned forwards and pressed his cheek to her knee, a hiding place for the wide grin that briefly stretched across his face. "As you wish, mestra. Your husband is eternally grateful for your beneficence and wisdom."

She dug her nails into his scalp as a little warning not to overdo it too much. 

Everyone's faces were admirably non-comittal when she met their gazes. 

They didn't stay much longer after that. Not with every flinch and cringe in Dario's posture sending sharp sparks of heat between Khalila's legs. Long enough for one or two more cups of tea, the remains to be poured into Dario, and no longer. The rest of the night wouldn’t be for such prudish eyes.

She made her farewells, and beckoned Dario up into a high kneel that made him wince and bite his lip and clench his thighs, so that she could attach his leash to his harness. It sat over his fine silver shirt today, and could almost pass as a particularly dramatic form of suspenders. Almost.

Parker followed them to the door, and gave Dario an appraising look from eyes that were sharp and hungry like a lioness. 

"I'm surprised that a couple as fond of control as you two don't make use of a nice slave collar. It's quite traditional."

Hot nausea washed over Khalila. She remembered watching Morgan weep as Keria Morning ceremonially bound her with a fine, gleaming collar around her neck. It felt so long ago, now.

She remembered - 

No, she didn't. No, she  _ didn't. _

\- she didn't remember the screaming because there hadn't been any screaming, Morgan hadn't screamed, but Khalila's mind always created screams anyway, because how had she done that, how had her friend been strong enough to stand there silently and burn -

Dario grabbed her hands, then her shoulders, warm and real, and the loop broke. He stood in front of her, eyes wide and worried, and sighed with relief when she gave him a tiny, shaky smile. 

She swallowed. She'd have to tell her Medica about this. She'd thought she'd got past this stage. 

"The real-life context of Library slavery is far too recent for us as a couple to accept perversion of it by anyone other than an Obscurist." Dario's voice was very firm. Very polite, with a little deferential tilt of his head towards Parker, but his words dropped into the foyer with such solid certainty that for a moment there was utter silence and stillness. 

Then Khalila gestured him down sharply, for speaking out of turn and for grabbing her without permission and frankly just to regain control of him in lieu of herself.

He bent himself, scrunching his face pitifully against the floor where he thought that she couldn't see it, into the dogeza position of profuse apology. But she could tell from the insolent curve in his spine that this was as far as he would go in apology. Fair enough, perhaps. 

* * *

She wound the leash around her hand and pulled it taut, and together they walked out into the warm evening air of Alexandria.

They had to wait a few minutes for their carriage to travel from the road up the long driveway. Khalila wished the air was cooler. Her face still felt too hot. 

She needed a distraction. 

"Are you all right?" She gestured for Dario to stand. He staggered as he did so, and danced from foot to foot just once before mastering himself. 

"Are you?" He reached to cup her face with his hands, and she dashed his wrists away, hard. That was not what she needed right now. 

She backed him against the opulent marble facing of the house and pushed the heel of her hand into his abdomen. There was a soft bulge under her hand.

Free of the need to put on a mask for their company, desperation blazed stark across his face. He gasped a pained breath in, and was too driven by panting to hold it for long. 

"No. Are you all right, darling?"

He didn't utter a word of protest, just stood where she had put him, staring down at her with a kind of terrified rapture. 

She could order him to wet himself and he would, but that still involved his own active will. There was something even more satisfying about knowing that she could physically force the bodily function to occur and he would merely yield to her actions. It settled the shakes inside her, and made her feel simultaneously powerful and grateful. 

“Good boy,” she said, and went up on tiptoes to kiss him. 

He tried to leave his seatbelt off in the carriage, but she glared at him, then reached over once he’d buckled in and pulled it tighter around his middle. 

He whimpered but licked his lips too. She slid her hand downwards and was unsurprised to find him hard. The two sensations amplified each other, he said. All the better. 

With one hand she undid his trousers and wriggled inside, bypassing his damp shaft to rub at his still-loose scrotum and perineum instead. With her other hand, she fussed at his hair, brushing it free from his high forehead, pushing her fingers soothingly against his scalp. 

“I could tell you to wet yourself just as soon as we get out of the carriage, couldn’t I?” she whispered into his ear. “No-one would be able to see the stain spreading down your trousers in the dark. What’s another puddle on the paving stones? How nice would it feel, to relieve all that terrible pressure?” 

He groaned and murmured something deliberately incoherent, flopping his head back against the carriage seat. She pressed her teeth against his beautiful neck. 

When they arrived at the Lighthouse, the guard opened Dario’s door. He inhaled sharply and his hand scrabbled towards his erection as he swung his legs around ready to stand. 

Khalila clicked her tongue, and Dario froze. 

“Oh dear,” she said. 

“Sorry,” he blurted immediately. She watched, amused, for a second or two as he tried to find the concentration for a more formal apology.  _ Don’t touch yourself without permission  _ was one of their most basic rules, after all. “Please forgive my thoughts of transgression, mestra,” he said at last. A shiver ran through him and she saw his thighs clench again. 

She rolled her eyes. “You Christians and your guilty thoughts.” She snuggled up to him again and nibbled on his ear. “Would it help, to hold yourself?”

He nodded. 

“Well, then. I’ll get out the carriage and come and help you up.”

So she did. It was against security protocol - the Archivist should always be last out of the vehicle - but they were literally parked at the base of the Lighthouse, with the main gates secured behind them, and she had, in several embarrassing half-conversations, negotiated a degree of selective blindness with her security detail. 

And it was all worth it when she wrapped her hand around Dario’s erection and squeezed as he stood up. 

“Let me look after you.”

He leaned against the carriage as if there was no strength left in him, weak and wobbly, twisting his hips from side to side and breathing hard. 

She leant against his chest and listened to his heart beating. “I could give you permission right now,” she reminded him. 

A violent shiver wracked him head to toe. “Yes, mestra. Please. Thank you.” 

“No.” She lessened the squeeze on his shaft, and ran her finger through the moisture coating it. “Is that pre-ejactulate or have you leaked, darling?”

“Pre-cum,” he said immediately, sounding hilariously affronted. Obediently he opened his mouth to suck her finger clean. “Truthfully, mestra,” he confirmed when she raised an eyebrow. Bereft of the useful pressure on his shaft, his hips were jerking from side to side so much that he wasn’t comfortable to lean against anymore. 

“Truthfully, then, can you manage until we get home?”

A look of utmost horror blanched his face. Concerned, she cupped the nape of his neck, until he said; 

“Not if we take the stairs, mestra.”

She laughed. She couldn’t quite help it. “You’re always such a pessimist, beloved.” She kissed his panting mouth as best as she could. “You’ve been so good. Why would I sabotage any chance of success?”

As she’d hoped, the mention of potential success made Dario try even more. He managed to walk almost normally from the carriage door to the lift. 

Only fifty-three floors to go. 

“I wish the guards weren’t there,” she mused while he frantically paced the lift’s tiny space. “I wish I could walk you down that corridor on the leash, all naked and desperate. Stand  _ still _ ,” she snapped suddenly. 

Dario rocked to a halt and stared at her, eyes far too wide to be called ‘attentive’. Then mortification spread over his face along with colour, and she knew before he even grabbed for his crotch that he’d leaked. 

She clicked her tongue again, and glided up to him to press reassuringly on the bulge in his trousers with the heel of her hand. “Nearly there.”

Some of his facial expression eased at that. He was always so twisted up about failure, her poor boy.

Another embarrassing walk down the penthouse suite corridor, where Dario had the bright idea to pretend to be very drunk. It was an excellent explanation for his meandering gait and the way that he leant against her, and the slick sheen of perspiration coating his face and neck, and even the very small, almost unnoticeable darker patch on his black trousers. She let him reduce some tension by telling the guards to hurry up and wave them through, though when he started getting too much into the role and began cursing loudly at them she dug one warning finger into his hard abdomen. 

“Do hurry,” she said, rolling her eyes at them as if in apology. “I don’t want him making a mess on the rugs.”

“Get in the shower,” she ordered the moment they were securely inside their private suite. “Keep your clothes on.”

''Can I hold my cock?'' he asked, waddling desperately in the right direction. Too wound up for pretty words now. 

''Yes,'' she said, generously, riding the high of stripping away his last and most powerful defence mechanism. 

She waited for thirty seconds after she heard the shower cubicle door swing closed. When she entered, there were already pale splatters around his feet. Other than being barefoot, he was still fully dressed, as she'd asked. 

His eyes, glittering black with intensity, gazed at her as if she was the most important being in the whole world. At this point, she rather supposed that she was. 

''Release.''

By the time he'd fumbled his cock free, it was already spurting, urine hitting the glass shower wall like a loosed hosepipe. 

''Eyes open,'' she reminded him, as the spurts turned into a stream. He groaned aloud, and his eyes rolled wildly in his head as he tried to obey her through his body's automatic reaction. 

But that tearing bliss never lasted to the end of the flow, and so she got to watch his expressions veer back and forth as he struggled with the fact that he was spraying urine all over his very expensive, very attractive outfit. 

They both knew from experience that he could stop the flow mid-way with the worst of the desperation alleviated, and she watched as he mutely begged her with his eyes to order that attempt. 

But no. She wouldn't. She enjoyed watching him struggle in all areas. Even sartorially. 

''And the other one,'' she said, as his erection shed its last few drops of urine. 

He whimpered as he obediently started to jerk himself off. His legs shook violently. 

''Good boy.'' She stepped closer, pressing herself right up against the glass door to watch. He lurched towards her, making a squeaking, undignified noise, pressing his free hand against the urine-beaded glass in a fruitless attempt to reach her. 

"Please?" His voice shook. 

Denial, always. 

''Good boy,'' she said again, breathless herself with desire for her beautiful husband, torn open to his most private layers. ''Don't hold back. Let me see you.''

When he came, he arched up and back in a curve that almost took him to his tiptoes, and tumbled down into the cubicle, hitting his head hard enough that for a moment she was worried. 

''M'ri','' he slurred, as if she'd spoken her concern aloud. ''Fuck.''

Khalila quickly shed her own clothes and clambered in to stand over her satiated husband, turning the shower on a fast, wide setting to clean the area around them as quickly as possible. 

''Hello,'' she said softly, petting his hair and checking for a tender area where he'd banged it. He made a deep satisfied sound and hugged her legs. His goatee against her thighs was nice, but she would rather be able to move. ''Let me wash you.'' 

He nuzzled her thighs. ''Do you not want…'' He completed the sentence by nibbling her thigh and running his hand upwards, sliding slick as he got higher and higher. 

She clicked her tongue and he stilled his roaming hand. ''We're not done yet.''

''No?'' He lapped at her leg and shivered. She couldn't tell whether it was aftershocks from his double release or anticipation from her words. 

''No. I'm going to render you even more boneless than you are right now, and then rub myself off against your body.'' She'd had to practise saying this sort of thing, but it helped that Dario seemed to utterly adore hearing her be so blunt about her controlling and dominant desires. 

Sure enough, he groaned and rubbed his face against her like a cat. ''Fantastic idea.''

"Better clean up first, though."She set about chivying him away then bent to undo his shirt buttons. 

Heat magnified between her legs at his easy physical compliance. Like a doll, waiting to be stripped of one outfit, one persona, to start again. 

"You'd do anything I wanted, wouldn't you?" she asked, half to herself. 

"Always."


	14. Mummification - Anit/OC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full list of tags for this chapter: 
> 
> **Mummification, Bondage, Asexual Kink, Mild Pain, Sensory Deprivation, Blindfolded, Grief/Mourning, Families of Choice, Patricide, Catharsis, Potentially Underage (more below).**
> 
> This is asexual kink, done as more of a coping mechanism for the character than anything else. I have no real idea how old Anit is in this, but there's nothing to say one way or the other whether she's over eighteen yet or not. Her partner is roughly the same age, whatever that might be. 
> 
> Again this isn't underage sex but it could be seen as underage kink, so if you want to avoid it feel free. 
> 
> Note, although I've tagged this as Anit/Female OC, this character does actually appear in Sword and Pen as a priestess of Anubis who is connected to the smugglers and knows Anit - she just doesn't get named. So I did it. Seshen, after the Ancient Egyptian for lotus flower. 
> 
> This was also just an excuse for me to copy and paste as much of the real Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead into a chapter screen as possible, apparently. Pretty much everything that looks like ritual speech is either copied from translations I found online or bastardised versions of such.

Anit stared up at the huge stone statue of Anubis. Normally there would be blue flames roaring from the braziers either side of the god, but they were silent and lightless today. 

No-one was supposed to be here today. 

Her footsteps echoed as she walked further into the temple. She stopped and let the sound fade up into the distant vaulted heights of the ceiling. 

It was unnerving - would she admit ‘frightening?’ No, no she would not - to stand before Anubis right now. Protector of the tombs, and the dead who lay in them - why should he care for her? The living, still. The living, _only_ , last of her line. 

Most of the time she lived with that knowledge, and the knowledge lived with her, but occasionally it grew a little too large and vigorous and took up necessary space.

Headaches and joint aches. Night after night of terrible dreams. Lack of appetite. Too much crying, requiring heavy make-up before she could leave her room to command her people. 

Her father’s akh, more than likely, his spirit returned to interfere. She had fulfilled all of his funerary wishes and given him everything that he might need to reunite himself fully in the afterlife, but she couldn’t exactly blame a part of him for staying behind to harass her. 

She had killed him, after all.

And she’d do it again, given the same circumstances. 

“Seshen?” she called into the gloom. Shouldn’t they get started? She wasn’t certain when the temple would need to reopen. They had got away with this before, but Seshen wouldn’t risk her priestess role, surely?

One, two, three footsteps echoed, and then a figure materialised out of the shadows. 

Anit wasn’t met by the sight of Seshen, her loved one and childhood friend. Instead, a black and gilt jackal mask faced her, eye-holes so deep-set that she was denied even that familiar view. An intricate lattice of black beads overlaid a bleached linen dress. 

Anubis, but feminine in form. Anput, the jackal god’s consort and counterpart. Her guide for this particular … descent. 

Anit’s very fingertips buzzed with … Not quite excitement. Agitation, perhaps. The clarity she found when facing danger. She bowed very low and said as she straightened, “Welcome, my Lord.” The archaic language felt clumsy in her mouth, but the two of them had practised this quite extensively. 

The masked figure dipped its head fractionally in response, then turned and walked away. Anit hurried to follow. 

They walked down an unlit corridor, where Anit fell behind the jackal’s sure steps through her cautious need to press her hands to the stone walls and test her footing with each step. 

Then a door was opened and light revealed the last few steps for her. Not the sterile illumination of modern chemical glows, but the ancient flicker of oil lamps.

Anit halted for a moment in the doorway, stricken anew by the skin-crawling thrill of being somewhere so forbidden. 

The embalming room. 

It was strange, the things the mind wanted to soothe itself with. This was a corruption of the funerary rite, one of the many procedures designed to hold the world in place against the forces of chaos - but Anit was, frankly, quite sure that the gods hated her already, so what harm could it do?

The gimlet-eyed jackal mask held her in the doorway for a moment longer, frozen like a doomed rabbit. Shaking her head, she stepped into the room. As she walked she untied the wrap-around dress she was wearing and let it fall to the ground.

Anubis stood between her and where she needed to get to. 

“Oh you-” She coughed and started again. “Oh you who are the openers of ways and the cleavers of roads for souls in the house of Osiris. Open the ways, cleave the roads for my soul with you, so that it may go in in fury, and emerge in peace from the house of Osiris without being blocked, without being turned back.”

The muzzle of the mask dropped in a nod, and the figure retreated behind the embalming table. 

When she’d first seen the table, she’d remarked to Seshen that its skinny legs didn’t look strong enough to bear her weight. It had been a silly comment, born of nervousness, and Seshen had just snorted and said that the table was at least three times as old as either of them, and had held much, much bigger bodies.

The table was cold as she lay down on it and rested her head against the hard wooden headrest. 

Without any preamble, the masked figure began to wash Anit’s body with tepid water. Her movements were quick and firm, treating breast, belly and vulva just the same as shoulder or calf or temple. Cool and professional, with none of their usual intimacy together. 

It was a struggle for Anit to allow herself to be manhandled in such a distant way, but she did her best to keep her limbs loose and heavy and to keep her eyes fixed on the ceiling. Occasionally the masked face loomed over her as she was manoeuvred around, but there was no acknowledgement in those deep, dark eyes. 

By the time she had been cleaned down to her very toes, she was fighting a shiver from the spreading chill. Her skin was prickling, hairs stretching high in earnest uselessness. 

Then gentle fingertips encouraged her to close her eyes. 

Her heart tried to leap out of her chest. She knew what was coming now. 

Except it didn't come. Nothing happened. 

Oh, yes. She needed to say the words again. 

She realised that she was holding her breath and reluctantly let it out again. 

She never knew _exactly_ when this was going to happen. 

“Oh you who are the openers of ways and the cleavers of roads for souls in the house of Osiris, open then the ways, cle- “

Her voice choked off halfway through ‘cleave’, lost in a raw scream of pain as a blade sliced down her torso, all along the left side from breast to hip. 

Instinctively she curled up and grabbed for the weapon, only to be shocked yet again by that unflinching mask of Anubis staring down at her. 

Yet, as the blast of primal fear wore off a little, for the first time she could really sense Seshen behind the mask. Watching her warily. 

Shit. 

She bit back the stupid words, “I’m fine,” and instead lay back down again. 

Another light touch to her eyes. It was more difficult to close them now, with her body alight with pain and adrenaline, but she managed it. 

Another deep breath. 

“Oh you who are the open-'' 

The blade descended again, in almost exactly the same spot. 

Anit couldn't stop herself from crying out again, but she could restrain the reaction to sounds rather than words. She could stop herself from moving, other than gripping the table edge until her hands hurt and tears ran into her hair.

She let the pain crash into her like lightning. 

Pushed aside the comforting rationalisations of dull blades in ice water, drawing no more than a graze and a livid line of bruising to her skin.

The jackal god, Lord of the dead, was raking her soft underbelly with tooth and claw and she was a willing sacrifice. 

What was death without pain, after all? Not the world Anit knew. 

Next the uncaring hands descended again, carefully smoothing a sticky paste over her. The steady movements calmed Anit’s frantic heartbeat and breathing, and she found herself relaxing against the table in a way that she hadn’t done for weeks. 

Still, she was alert. Trying to remember the whole procedure, trying to imagine what Seshen was doing right now based on every tiny scrape of her feet. Her heartbeat echoed in her ears as she lay there with her eyes shut. 

The slightest touch of linen against her palm made her want to laugh. Wrapping time. There was so much linen required to wrap a whole person. Just … so much. 

Enough to wallpaper a room? To stuff a mattress?

She snorted then, then bit down the stupid hysteria. Taking a deep breath. Locking it down. Like she’d done every morning for weeks. 

Gradually, the linen strips were wound around her wrist, her palm, around every finger. Then a pad of cloth was put in her palm and her fingers bent into a loose fist around it. More linen followed, around the fist in patient figures of eight, and by the end of that, her hands and fingers were of no use at all. 

Instinctively, her mind began to tug at the problem. Bound. How to get out without fingers? 

Not tight, not painful, this, but somehow even harder to bear than the blade. Harder to keep herself still. Harder to keep her eyes closed, when she couldn't defend herself even if she’d wanted to. Her heartbeat throbbed more louder, beating against the inside of her skull. 

A scent distracted her. Thick, complicated, full of different elements. 

Kapt incense. An ancient tradition. 

In the way of smells, it summoned up clear memories. Her brothers’ funeral. Her father. Others, who’d died in the trade for whom she’d been sent along to represent the family less obviously than her more well-known father. 

It wasn’t the scent of death. She wasn’t poetic like that. She knew the true reek of death, sweet and rotting and mixed with voided bowels. 

This was the scent of saying farewell to the dead, and it made her breath catch in her throat. She remembered standing in the dim mastaba chamber, leaning against the cool stone wall because she was so tired after the madness of helping Jess and the emptiness of sitting by his sickbed. Remembered feeling half-drunk on that smell. Feeling every pair of eyes in that room weighing on her, as if they _knew_. As if she had a brand of her crime on her forehead which could never be erased. 

For a moment, a gentle jangling sound folded seamlessly into the memory of that lamplit room. The ritual sekhem rattle, metal rings clacking against the bronze hoop. 

Then a hand closed around her wrists and she jerked clear from the memory. Fought, for a moment, until she remembered where she was. Saw Seshet peering at her anxiously through the mask again. 

“Sorry.” Her voice shook. There were more tears on her face, and she tried to raise her hands to dash them away. Was met with huge, useless linen mitts. A sob caught in her throat, and she choked it back despite how much it hurt to do so. 

Yet again, her eyes were encouraged to slide closed. She couldn’t quite lie back down, though. Couldn’t uncoil herself enough. Just sat hunched on the table in the dark, feeling her tender torso throb. 

The sekhem rattled on and she kept breathing in mouthful after mouthful of the thick incense smell. Gradually, the tension eased and she stopped feeling so stupidly tearful and trapped. 

She could stop this any time that she liked. It didn't matter how much pain she went through, or how helpless she was; she could stop this. All of it. 

She lay back again. A hand cupped her cheek. Seshen’s hand. 

“You are in the hands of our Lord Anubis.” A soft questioning intonation. 

Anit smiled a little. “I am honoured to be under his gaze.” Yes, it was fine to continue. 

It was a privilege, being able to stop death. 

She allowed her arms to be wrapped and her hands to be positioned neatly crossing on her chest.

Then the bandaging began in earnest, the harder, longer work of covering the length of her legs, over her crotch, up around her belly. All the while, she listened to the familiar recitations in this corrupted context. 

“Anit, may your name endure, may your corpse remain and your mummy thrive. Anubis has guarded you. He has made your protection.”

A lurching, dizzy thrill swept over Anit as Seshen raised her arms to the traditional crossed position. 

The thrill was two-fold. Firstly the strange, gleeful horror of taking on the pose of a corpse just as the recitation named her as such. Secondly, the stomach-hollowing vulnerability of giving up all her movement to her girlfriend, and how easily Seshen dealt with her leaden limbs. 

It was reassuring and comforting that she could take this absurd trip into the underworld and know she was being expertly cared for. 

Especially as the bandages wound carefully around her throat. 

“You shall not be turned away from the doors of the Underworld, you shall not be turned away in heaven or on earth. May your corpse be rejuvenated in the presence of the gods. May you breathe forever and ever.”

With that last phrase, Senshet moved onto Anit’s face. 

Two layers around the mouth - enough to breathe through if she had to, but restricting enough to make her heart race when she first tried. And she always tried. Even though her nostrils were clear, and would remain so for the whole time, she always frantically tried to breathe through her covered mouth, through a jaw that could barely open an inch. 

Soft pads of cloth over her eyes, then wrappings to hold them in place. She’d kept them steadfastly closed the whole time, but the sudden change in the colour of her eyelids from dull red to black made a shiver run up her spine. 

Now she lay there, totally immobilised and helpless, in the darkness and the steadily building heat. 

She wasn’t utterly without her senses, though; the strong smell of the incense permeated the bandages over her face, and with only one layer tied over her ears she could still clearly hear Seshet shaking the sekhem rattle and chanting.

Step by step, Seshet narrated her journey. Through the false door of her tomb, along a corridor lined with statues of the gods. 

(That bit reminded her far too much of the Library. Her new lawful status and co-operation had enabled her to access areas her father must only have dreamt of. Was it a coincidence that the path to the old Archivist’s office looked like the path to the underworld? 

She made a mental note to explore that later, and to get Seshet to remove that section for next time. Far too distracting.)

“An offering given by the pharaoh to Anubis, Lord of the Sacred Lands, Master of Secrets. That he may give an invocation offering of food, water, health, clothing, and every good and pure thing upon which a god lives.”

A rustle of food wrappers. The smell of cooked meat, fresh bread and fermented cheese made Anit’s mouth water. 

"For the ka of the beloved Anit.”

For her father, Ibrahim, true of voice

For her brothers Siese and Brahim, true of voice

For the brother of her brother, Brendan, true of voice. 

For her brother Jess, born of Celia.”

So many dead family members. All but Jess. Each naming brought grief welling inside her like blood welling from a wound. 

They had debated over including her father in this recitation. Hearing his name, the reminder of his ‘true of voice’ deceased status, did make her feel cold even within her hot linen cocoon. But it just wouldn’t feel right without it. She might have ended his life, but he had started hers, after all. She didn’t want to destroy his legacy, his honour, his name. She’d even taken half of that for herself in the moniker ‘Red’. 

Still, she felt tears soaking into the pads over her eyes, and there was a hard lump in her throat. Could he hear his name being called? Would his spirit deign to look upon her? 

Did he have any understanding of her motivations? How could he, when she still struggled to explain them?

On Seshet went, regardless of Anit’s inner struggle. Anit let the words flow around her like river water, absently following the narration through the caverns of the underworld, past lakes of fire and glimmering turquoise trees. 

The heat inside her mummification built to new heights. When she was stupid enough to try to breathe through her mouth, she could feel her hot air clinging to her lips and chin.

Obstacles were faced and described. Ancient, primeval deities and creatures that Anit didn’t even know outside of this specific context, like a catfish-headed god, a snake that spat fire, jackals feeding on corpses. One by one they were pacified by prompt offerings.

(Anit really hoped there would be some left for her later.)

Finally, it was time for the Hall of Judgement. 

In she walked, to where Osiris and Anubis sat ready to judge her. Arrayed behind them were the forty-two assessors of Maat. 

Her imagination was powerful, immobilised in the dark as she was, and she quailed at the weight of all those gazes as her spirit-self stood before them nude and vulnerable, scored open by the claw of Anubis. 

Dread pooled in her belly, despite her attempts to rationalise it away. 

Then she was glad of her bindings, because the linen over her mouth was sliced open, and if she’d been able to flinch, she might have cut her lip or tongue. She couldn't see the knife, but she’d seen this done for real, with a serpent-headed red jasper blade. 

“Your mouth has been given to you that you may speak with it in the presence of the great gods.”

Anit licked her lips. They were dry and sticky. 

Before her heart could be weighed, she had to deny any lifelong wrongdoings. This, she thought, in her darker moments, must have been where her father had failed. It was surely where she would fail, when her time came. 

There were ways around the confessions, of course, and she was about to use them. But, even so. 

Right now, she needed to beg her heart not to reveal any lies in her confessions. 

There was usually a flute playing at this point in the ceremony, and the haunting melody echoed round her mind as she worked her dry mouth for moisture enough to begin. 

“My heart is mine in the house of hearts. My heart is mine, and is content with me.

"My heart of my earthly being. Do not stand against me as witness beside the lords of the ritual. Do not speak against me about my actions. Do not make a case against me beside the great god. Hail my heart!”

More tears dampened her bandages. There was some sort of dreadful irony in her begging a part of her body not to betray her, when she had betrayed her own flesh and blood. 

Seshen shook the shekmet rattle a little harder, and Anit tried to breathe past the lump in her chest and to concentrate. 

Call and answer, now. 

“I have not robbed.”

“I have not robbed.” It was true, as far as she was concerned. The Library should never have claimed ownership of originals, so she had never committed a crime in circulating them. 

“I have not conspired against the king.” 

“I have not conspired against the king.” Likewise here. Her family had never accepted the growing godhood ambitions of the Library Archivists. 

Her father might, perhaps, have felt even more secure in answering that, given his deal with the previous Archivist. 

(And yours with Khalila Seif is different how? she scolded herself.)

Others followed. 

“I have not purloined offerings.”

“I have not committed adultery.”

“I have not been angry without just cause.” That dug deep into her chest, but before she could dwell on it, Sheshen read out the next one

“I have not masturbated.” Sheshen was smiling, Anit could tell by the sound of her voice, and her own dry lips curved upwards too. Come on, heart. Time to test your silence with that lie. 

The second safeguard in the Hall of judgement, other than your own heart's silence, was that the priest could write you a hand-picked list of the usual questions. Seshet had done so. This workaround was more usually seen for military leaders, who couldn’t truthfully answer denials of violence and causing death, but had still been acting to preserve order against chaos. 

Had she been acting against chaos when she shot her father? 

She’d thought so at the time. 

The thought rattled around her brain as the confessions finished and the clatter of bronze revealed the approaching judgement. 

It wasn’t hard at all to imagine that black and gilt Anubis face staring down at a set of scales. A feather in one side, her heart on another. She didn’t know what the props were. She didn’t much care. 

Did I do the right thing?

The silence stretched, until every tiny sound seemed deafening. Emotions writhed in Anit’s chest. Her eyes strained as if they could induce sight through sheer effort. 

It was the right decision. She knew that. But he was her father, and that was wrong beyond consequences. 

She didn’t want to think that he might have failed the judgement and been devoured, to die for the second and final time. 

Pieces clicked into place all at once, and at the same time pain lanced her chest. Sharp enough to hurt, to kill. That damned heart of hers, having its say at last. 

“I’m sorry.” She started to cry. She’d never said that before. Never let the thought coalesce. 

_You deserved it and I’d do it again and it was right, but I’m still so, so sorry_. 

She had killed him and she loved him and she would honour his memory forever and all those things could fit together without tearing her apart after all.

“I’m sorry, papa!” 

She bawled like a child into the dark silence, until the linen over her eyes was soaked and sticky and her chest was aching badly. Seshen wrapped her to account for normal breathing, not these huge, heaving sobs. 

So she wasn’t surprised to feel Seshen’s hand land on her ankle and squeeze, their signal for “I’m getting you out now,” if for some reason Seshen wouldn’t say it. 

“No,” she said. She wasn’t quite done. There was one important bit of the death ritual left, and she wasn’t going to leave that undone. Not when it had suddenly become so much more meaningful. 

_For me. For my father, if he can still be saved, if there is any fragment of his spirit still there_. 

She imagined ignoring the scales, or dashing them aside, squaring up to the gods of the dead as she spoke.

“See, I am come before you. There is no evil of mine, no crime of mine, no wrong of mine, no witness to me, none against whom I have done anything.”

It was false, but it was also true. Her heart and her head agreed. 

“I am pure,” she said defiantly through hiccupping sobs. “I am pure, I am pure, _I am pure_.”

She let Seshen start to unwrap her then. 

“Hail, Osiris-Anit, the justified,” Seshen answered ritual with ritual - and now Anit knew why she hadn’t spoken before. She was crying too. “May you enter into the Underworld in a state of great purity. The two great gods have purified you in the Great Hall.”

There was a little more, but Anit was too distracted by how _ridiculously_ cold the air felt as Seshen unwrapped her sweaty feet. 

She felt light and free and bubbly all of a sudden, though tears still soaked from her blind eyes and her scored side still hurt badly enough that she might need to bother Burnham about it. 

There would be comfort, now; blankets and tasty food and Seshen pressed against her and fussing, and maybe, for once, she deserved the good things about this too.


	15. Prostate Milking - Khalila/Santi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full list of tags for this chapter:
> 
>  **UNDERAGE** (kind of, potentially, unintentionally)
> 
> Specifically, it's set in Smoke and Iron, so Khalila is likely to be between 16-18 though canon doesn't ever confirm anything on her age. I'm imagining she's 18 or over here, but I'm warning for it just in case, because Santi does do a lot of stressing about her age and that could squick someone out. Related tags: **Age Difference, a little bit of Mentor/Protege.**
> 
> **Prostate Massage, Prostate Milking, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Pheromones, Heat Sex, Light Dom/sub**
> 
> Apparently I can turn anything into an Omegaverse fic. Fancy that. Apologies if your thing is prostate massage fic, this laaaaargely got overtaken by omegaverse tropes.

Santi finished outlining the plan to take over the ship. Khalila accurately repeated everything back and answered his probing questions about potential derailing issues until he was satisfied. 

He wouldn’t have trusted any of the other children to do that - remember so accurately. Thomas would remember a written plan or a map, but exact verbal instructions, not so much. Santi still had no real idea of what Dario was capable of, beyond deception, and then, Jess, who would be accurate in memorising orders after his childhood … ah, Jess. 

Hot, fierce rage welled up in his chest again at the thought of what the two of them had done to Chris, but he tamped it down. It wasn’t productive. 

When he met Khalila’s gaze again, the look she was giving him made him want to stare at something else. Anything else. 

It wasn’t the sharp, piercing look that Chris would give him, but it was no less effective for its comparative softness. It was as if she was calmly reading the thoughts off the back of his skull.

She opened her mouth to speak, and his hackles rose as if a threat was arriving. He opened his mouth too, to protest that he’d already _said_ he wouldn’t go after Dario!

“Captain? May I ask you an extremely personal question?”

He closed his mouth and stared at her for a moment, the growl dying in his throat. She held his gaze, and then said, just a touch too fast for her otherwise calm facade;

“Bearing in mind our plans, we should all make sure that we are in the best physical condition we can be.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?” His stomach sank even as he spoke.

“Don’t play the fool.” She rolled her eyes. “I have a very large family. Full of omegas. Some of them are idiots with their health, too.”

“I’m not being an idiot with my health.” That was so untrue that he couldn’t stay still while he said it; he started to pace around the room, chased by the thundering of his own heartbeat in his ears. “Anyway. This is completely inappropriate. It’s none of your business.”

“I believe I’ve already said why it has become my business. Or do we need to build in contingencies for you falling ill?”

He did growl, then, the low tearing sound yanked from the growing ball of agitation in his chest. “I’m not going to fall ill, Khalila!”

She sighed, then said in a very apologetic tone, “Captain, I can … I can _tell_ , all right?”

If an omega prostate wasn’t regularly stimulated, it began to enlarge, causing steadily worsening problems with emptying the bladder. At home, he’d taken medication to stop the growth, but that had hardly been available to heretic escapees, or Burner prisoners. 

Santi stared at the wall in front of him and flushed hot with shame. Damn pheromones. Giving everything away. 

She continued in the space left by his silence;

“As I said, I’m familiar with it. And your scent is strong enough that even Thomas with his beta senses knows something is wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he mumbled to the wall. A token protest. 

“You must be urinating blood, by now.”

He whipped his head around to glare at her for ripping off the thin film of polite pretence from their conversation. “That _really_ is none of your business.”

She glared back, now. Finally. Her eyes weren’t as dark as Chris’ and the glare wasn’t as vicious, but it felt familiar nonetheless. “Fine. It remains your business, right up until you collapse with a kidney infection and throw all of our plans into jeopardy. Excellent strategy, _captain_.” 

He growled again. She didn’t flinch. “What the fuck do you want me to do?”

One of her hands came up and patted her headscarf, as if making sure it was still secure. “Why are you so reluctant?” Her eyes brightened with the satisfaction of an answer, even as he started to sense an embarrassed change in her scent. “Can you not … reach? Do you need to improvise an aid?”

That was an easy excuse, and he almost seized it, but the shock of realising that she was suffusing the room with her scent distracted him for long enough for her gaze to sharpen again. When he inhaled, he could taste sweet vanilla, with cinnamon and ginger undertones. Arousal. 

Jesus. 

“Are you offering to _help_?” he blurted. His face felt like it was aflame. “Chris would fucking eviscerate me. You’re a child.”

“I wasn’t a child when I took my seat on the postulant train to Alexandria, let alone …” She spread her hands, as if anything could encompass everything that had happened since. “If we live to experience the privilege, Scholar Wolfe will no doubt continue thinking of us as children long past our own greying hair. You have, historically, been more pragmatic than that.”

Her gaze was getting sharper. More like Chris. 

Oh shit. That was why he’d kept comparing her to Chris in his thoughts, wasn’t it?

He’d always been drawn to small, more feminine alphas. It was partly natural preference and partly self-defense; he was strong and hirsute for an omega. More traditionally tall, muscular alphas tended to get insecure and demanding around him. 

Yes, he could see being attracted to her, in theory. For her looks, for her build, for her confidence and extraordinary competence, for her instinctive leadership skills and oratorical abilities.

All right, Nic. All right. Maybe more than in theory. He slid his hand into his pocket. He didn’t quite need to adjust yet, but he was starting to fill out, sure enough.

He looked at her for a long moment. She looked at him. Her mouth was open, just a fraction, and her lip was curled just a touch at the very corner. A beautifully subtle little Flemhen response as she scented him.

Wolfe had been known to wax lyrical about Santi’s scent, but at its core, he just described it as smoke and leather. Very different to Khalila’s own complex scent, or Dario’s for that matter. And that wasn’t even taking into account the way that his backed-up problem must be affecting his scent. He hoped she found it vaguely acceptable. 

He cleared his throat to say something, anything, to break the tense silence, but she got there first.

“”Why are you so reluctant?” she asked again. Her voice was soft, now. Almost coaxing. Santi should definitely have found that patronising and laughable, but instead it helped some of the tight bands loosen in his chest. 

“It’s boring,” he replied, as if she was pulling the truth out of him. “It’s boring, on my own, and it’s difficult and I don’t find it arousing, and …” He shrugged. “I tend to give up.”

“But it’s nicer with a partner?” Her scent was changing from one breath to the next, growing hotter and more spicy. 

“Yeah.” _Nicer_. Bless her. 

He missed Chris inside him with a vengeance. They had had only a very short window for penetrative sex, between Chris recovering and then Oxford setting him back again. They’d tried in Castle Raby - he’d wondered why, at the time, when Chris hadn’t seemed in the mood, but, shit, probably his alpha had been able to scent the problem building. The sex had been enjoyable, but Chris had been too gentle for it to do much physiological good. 

On that note;

“I’m probably going to get wrist-ache.” He laughed nervously. 

Great, Nic, he scolded himself. That’s not even slightly how you form the coherent and salient point of ‘I’m going to need a lot of stimulation if this is going to work.’

She laughed too, and smiled. “I’ll help.”

That mental image went straight to his cock. He swallowed, drew in a breath that was embarrassingly audible, and said, “Right. I’ll go and shower, then.”

She nodded. Licked her lips. “Do you want me to put some scent around?”

Fuck. His fingertips stroked the firm shaft of his cock gently through the lining of his pockets. “All right.” He had to clear his throat. His voice was hoarse. 

In the communal shower - little more than a spout, and freezing cold, but not sea-water at least - he stared down at his erection as if it were foreign to him. Between the prostate medication he’d taken in Chris’ absence and the constant stress of the last three years, he hadn’t gotten hard without stimulation for ages. 

He gave his cock a few firm strokes, but then reasserted self-control. It would be a lot, lot easier to sort his damn prostate out if he was still aroused. Instead, he slid his hand around his hip and probed behind. A little wet there. Enough to make him feel sensitive as he rubbed his entrance.

He kept his fingers more or less outside - he didn’t actually want to touch his prostate. Inconvenient for what needed to happen, but, still. It was so misshapen and huge and a sign of things being _wrong_. The feel of it under his fingers stressed him out. Easier to ignore it. 

He meant to imagine what might be in store for him ahead, but instead his mind slid down well-worn paths and he imagined Chris instead. Chris’ long, deft fingers just starting to tease him open; Chris’ loose wet hair clinging to Nic’s chest, to his back, as his other hand got busy. With Nic’s balls, perhaps, or caressing over his hips and stomach, or busy elsewhere, tugging his thick alpha cock to full hardness, ready to knot just as soon as he got inside. 

Even the thought of it made Nic clench down on his own fingers, made his cock swell against his belly. He hadn’t taken Chris’ knot in so damn long. A sob squeezed his throat, and he had to hold his breath to stop it. His eyes burned. Damn emotions. Damn prostate. Damn everything. 

He ruthlessly shut his mind up for a few moments, focusing on the pure mechanics of making sure that he was clean and able to take two fingers easily. 

Were two of his fingers the same as three of Khalila’s? He let his mind wander in the attractive and safer direction what Khalila might have meant by offering her help. It could be anything from just scenting up the room to her actually fucking him. 

A strong pulse of arousal ran through him at that thought, and he made a very soft sound in response. It echoed around the shower room, and reminded him with heart-pounding alarm of his vulnerability to attack by crew members. 

All right. He’d taken enough of a risk here. 

He didn’t bother putting his wet clothes back on again, and obviously, their captors hadn’t provided them with towels, so he went back to his room naked. It didn’t bother him. Not after half his life in the military.

When he opened the door to his room, the first breath made him cough. 

“Mary mother of _fuck_ , Khalila!” Her scent was so strong in here that it made his head spin. That was a pheromone _dump_ , not just calculated dispersal. Oh, to be so young again, and have so much to spare so easily. 

But he’d taken her by surprise too - her wide eyes were wandering over his nude body, gaze snagging with every sweep on his fully erect, damp cock. She was still sat where he had left her, but his attention to detail picked up that her sleeves were rolled higher, and there were very slight damp patches on her dress, where her hands had obviously been resting. There was a sink in the corner of the room, after all. 

Well. That probably answered how she intended to help. He shook off a quick clench of disappointment, and closed the door behind him.

“Right, then.” That came out harsh and loud, almost commanding, but he found that he didn’t have anything else to say after it. Khalila had focused tightly in on his face at the command, waiting for his instruction, but when nothing came, she stood up from the bed. 

She moved like Chris, he thought idly. That glide. Less dramatic than Chris, of course. Probably less of a learned habit. 

Her head tilted and without thinking too hard, he swept her into his arms as she got close and bent to bring their mouths together. 

The kiss was a little awkward and clumsy. He was too used to kissing Chris, and there was such a height discrepancy that the muscles around his neck and shoulders almost instantly lodged their protest. 

“Can I lift you up?” he asked. She nodded. 

God, she was so tiny and light - even lighter when she wrapped her legs firmly around his waist. Such a tiny, delicate thing - but he’d seen her kill men with only an iron poker, and she certainly wasn’t kissing him back with any kind of demure attitude. The contrast made him hot and eager, and he broke off the kiss to nuzzle down her neck and lick her scent gland. The thin layer of sebum that had accumulated there with her arousal was intoxicating. Sweet and spicy and full of aroused alpha pheromones. 

“My God, you smell so good,” he mumbled into her warm skin. 

“Thank you,” she said with a smile in her voice. 

But she didn’t say that he smelt good in return. 

Probably he didn’t. Damn stupid fucked-up prostate. 

“Stop that!” Her firm words, and more surprisingly a scrape of teeth over his jaw, derailed his self-pitying thoughts. 

“Stop what?” 

She huffed out a breath. He imagined her rolling her eyes. Then her teeth scraped him again, lower, onto his neck, and a hot thrill raced down his spine. 

“Is this all right? Can I use my teeth?”

“Please.” That came out shaky, and the moan that followed when she tensed her jaw was positively wanton. “Again.” 

Her next bite made him release her and lean against the wall to keep himself standing. It wasn’t quite as good as Chris; she didn’t bite as hard or hold down for as long, but oh God, it was definitely something. 

When he moved, he realised how wet he was now. Well, that’ll help, he thought pragmatically, before a sudden, terrified thought slammed into him. 

He felt too warm inside, and the world felt unreal. Too focused on the sense of touch, and not enough on sight and sound. 

“Am I going into heat?” He said it aloud, or rather, the horrible idea forced itself out of his mouth because it was too big to stay inside. 

She blinked up at him, and the worry he saw flash across her face fanned his into a roaring furnace. 

“I don’t-”

“I could be in heat. It’s been ages. Fuck. I can’t be going into heat. Fuck. I might as well lie down and fucking die rather than try to invade the god-damned Library while in heat.” 

At some point he’d pushed her away and started pacing. He only realised this because she plonked herself in his path and glared up at him. 

“Stop it!” she said, strongly enough that his racing thoughts made a hiccup of sheer surprise. In that pause, his steps slowed, and she surged forwards into his personal space. 

Jesus. Personal space. That concept didn’t fucking exist, he was naked and hard and soaked in front of _Khalila_ of all people - 

“I don’t think you’re in heat.” She stroked his chest, slow and rhythmic. “You’ll know better, of course, once you’re calmed down enough to think straight, but you don’t smell like it. Can you breathe for me? Like this?”

He made a valiant effort to slow his panicked breathing. 

“But what if-”

She took his hands and tugged, hard, and, distracted, he followed her to the bed. She made him sit down, and then sat next to him. One of her hands rested on the top of his thigh. He couldn’t quite stop looking at it, at the casual, unassuming confidence in that tiny gesture. 

“I don’t think you’re in heat,” she said. Her voice was back to that soft tone that had calmed him earlier. “I just think I might have overwhelmed you with too much scent. I’m sorry.”

Chris had a voice a little like that, too. Tender and gentle. Only generally used when Santi woke from nightmares or was half-consciously trying to fight a Medica. God, it had been a while since he’d been spoken to like that, with such care. 

A sob closed his throat again, and came out sounding ugly. 

“It’s all right.” Khalila nuzzled his neck and purred. “I think if I go, the effects will fade. Do you want me to leave?” 

“No!” He just about managed not to grab hold of her. “Don’t you dare.” He tried for a flippant tone. “You break it, you fix it.”

Khalila looked at him. Her pupils were huge. “Yes. Fixing you is why we’re here, isn’t it?” Her hand slid around his thigh, and without really thinking about it, he spread his legs for her. His cock twitched and moisture ran down its shaft. 

“Hold on.” He tried to keep his head, and stop listening to his omega instincts, which were bellowing at him to stop thinking and let his alpha look after him. The blankets beneath his hands were holding more of his attention (thin, scratchy, bad) than the thin filament of thought about positioning and comfort. He shifted backwards so that most of his body was on the bed. “Better.” 

“Better,” Khalila agreed. He relaxed at the affirmation from his alpha, then laughed at himself. When he raised his hands to rub his face bracingly, they didn’t quite fall down again and he found himself idly caressing his own neck and chest, where his scent glands were raised and sensitive. “This definitely feels like heat-brain, though. Jesus. I’m so fucking hazed over.”

“Sorry.” Khalila lay down next to him and grinned mischievously. “I don’t normally just … emit everywhere like that. I know I’ve got strong pheromones. But I thought it might help you relax.”

Santi laughed at that. “Relax. Yes. Once I stopped worrying you’d tipped me into full-blown heat.” He caught his breath as her hand moved underneath him, and raised his leg to give her better access. 

Her hand glided smoothly over his damp skin, and he grunted with contentment when her fingers gently touched his entrance. 

“You can go in,” he said, after she’d spent a little while stroking him there, making his entrance flutter and his nerves sing. 

“Oh, right.” One finger, cautiously only into the second knuckle. She had such small fingers. Was she even going to be able to reach his prostate? 

The uneasy anticipation was making him restless and overheated and even more fuzzy-headed. 

“You can do more. Two, at least. Three. As many as you want. I opened up for you.” So needy. Fuck. He clenched down around her tiny finger and grabbed his cock, squeezing it _hard_. “C’mon. Please.” 

She put her head on his chest and kissed just next to his nipple. “Ssh. All right.” Then she put in two more fingers, and he groaned at the faint stretch. So faint. He could take so much more. 

But then she touched his prostate. Big and swollen and bulging and awful. It would take so long to get down. His heart sank and his muscles tightened, and he saw her change her posture and grunt with the effort of not letting her fingers be pushed straight back out again. 

“Does it hurt?” she asked anxiously, turning her head to face him. That shift drove her fingers in deeper again, and his hand closed around his cock in an answering squeeze. 

“No.” It was hard to explain anyway, let alone with a head stuffed full of pheromones. “Used to it being frustrating, I suppose. Muscle memory.” How quickly three years of viewing prostate massage as a health chore could override all the pleasure he’d felt here before. “Bit broken.” He tried to laugh, but he couldn’t, quite. 

“Well, then. We’ll fix you.” With that, she rolled her head back around and closed her lips around his nipple. That was nice. He tried to focus on that, as her fingers poked away ineffectually at his prostate. 

But then she bit his nipple instead, and that _really_ got his attention. He yelped and pressed himself back into the mattress. 

“Too much?” Her dark eyes were wide and worried. So dark. Such big pupils. His instincts purred at the sight of such an aroused alpha. 

“No!” His hand twitched, halfway up already to push her head back down. “Good. Harder. _Everything_ harder. Longer. Please.”

Obligingly, she sank her teeth back into his chest and pressed harder inside him 

That was better. After a few moments of that, he could feel the first stirrings of pressure building.

“Like that.” He lay in a hormone daze and stared at the ceiling. Heard himself purring. 

The pressure built, slow and fuzzy and warm, until he was squirming on the bed, rubbing his own dampness everywhere, catching his breath and squeezing his cock hard enough to hurt. 

“Are you doing that to keep yourself erect, or to stop yourself coming?”

“Both?” She shifted her position and he panicked. “Don’t stop!” 

“I won’t. See?” She pushed harder and he whined with pleasure. He was closer than he’d expected. It was so much better when it wasn’t his own hands, Jesus Christ. 

Then she sat up. Maybe her wrist had gotten tired. Probably. He should have done it. Shouldn’t have put her to the effort. So small. So young. Fuck, he was a stupid bastard. 

“Don’t!” he pleaded again. Felt yet another stupid pheromone-induced sob croak out of his mouth. “Sorry.”

“Oh, you are _so_ desperate,” she said, very softly. She pressed him inside, hard enough that it must be hurting her, surely. It felt so good. He was so close. 

There was an intent, predatory look in her eyes as she stared down at him. 

He stared back up at her, panting for air and so aroused that he thought he might self-combust. He might be twice her size and could overpower her in an instant, but she was definitely in charge. 

Omega on their back, alpha looking down at them with pride. _Yes_. Instinct made him push his head back into the mattress, baring his neck. 

“You want a bite?” Her free hand slid up his chest and around his throat. Her nails scratched at his neck, and he whimpered. 

She licked her lips, slowly, and her mouth opened. He could actually see saliva pool in her mouth, and his own mouth flooded as if in sympathy.

Please bite me. Please. 

But then she swallowed, loudly, and closed her mouth with an audible clack of teeth. 

“Maybe later. Let’s see what happens after you come.” She raised her eyebrow.

Oh. He had his hand on his cock again. He hadn’t even noticed. He gave it a tight, slow squeeze that hurt just right.

Then she _growled_ , and he stopped, heart fluttering. 

“No. Hands off. Make sure you come the other way.”

“Yes, alpha.” He clumsily tucked both of his hands under the small of his back. That raised his hips. Oh, that was a better position. Good. He tried to arch his back even higher, pushing himself down onto her hand. 

“Well done,” she said, and started to purr. 

He lost his head after that, for a bit. Too much stimulation for his long-neglected omega needs. His world shrank to touch and sound; her hands bringing him closer and closer, happy alpha purring, scent so thick in the air that he felt like it must be settling in his lungs. 

Then the pressure inside him swelled to a crescendo at last, crashing down and drowning him in long, hot buzzing waves that spread from his centre to his toes and halfway up his chest. Hot liquid pooled on his lower belly, a pouring sensation inside that just went on and on with the cresting orgasmic sensation. 

And alpha teeth latching onto his neck, sinking in and it was perfect and right. 

He came back to himself some time later, and just caught the tail-end of him moaning Chris’ name. 

“Shit. Sorry.”

Khalila pinched his raw nipple, in a way clearly designed to just annoy. “I’m taking it as a compliment.”

He tried to smile. Even his face felt a little worn out. And sticky, just on his chin. Jesus, had his come hit his face? What was he, twenty again?? Everywhere felt wet and sticky and uncomfortable. And it probably wasn't the end. From experience, he reckoned he needed at least three more to get it all the way down. “Let’s have a look at how much more we have to go, then.” He started to fumble for his entrance, only to have Khalila grab his wrist. “What?”

“No. Stop. Wait.” She reared up above him again, and he fought the omega urge to go limp and pliant underneath her. 

“Why do I need to wait?” he protested. 

“Just wait. Just a minute.”

So he waited. Because he trusted her. He’d trusted her before this, and now? Jesus. What a woman. What an alpha. 

Then … Well, this was a bad idea?

It felt like heat come-down, but ALL OF IT and NOW.

Chill was sweeping over him in waves, raising goosepimples all over his wet skin, and with each wave came another swell of self-pity and sadness. Need for Chris. He missed Chris. He wanted Chris - alive, first and foremost, then safe, then well. Lowest priority was this, a Chris who could wreck him like this again, but he’d be lying if he didn’t admit that he desperately wanted that too. 

He cried like a little boy. Khalila sprawled on top of him, a purring, alpha-shaped blanket, gently nuzzling and kissing his neck. Somehow she’d found a dry corner of the bedlinen to pull over them both as he shivered and sobbed. 

“How did you know that would happen?” he demanded through a stuffed-up nose, once the worst of it had passed. 

She giggled. “I might have drenched Dario in pheromones once or twice. Just to see.”

Pheromone withdrawal. Crash. Yes. Had she stopped … He sniffed the air. Yes, there was nothing fresh there, only slowly fading scent pulses.

But he could feel how hard she was, with her lying on top of him like that. Maybe it was the pheromones still, but he was suddenly almost tearful again with gratitude and fondness. The least he could do was make her feel good too. 

He craned his head forward and obligingly she leaned in to meet him with a kiss. 

“What can I do for you?” he murmured, kissing her chin, her jaw, her ear. He rolled his hips up, shifting her erection between their bodies, and heard her catch her breath. 

“Oh, you don’t need to do anything. I’m fine. I’ll sort myself out later, maybe.”

Maybe?? No. Absolutely not. He was going to make sure she got a proper thank you. 

He batted his eyelashes at her and let a little of his own roiling pheromones scent the air, and murmured, “Please, alpha?”

It was a hilariously cheesy bit of manipulation and Chris would have denied him whatever he’d asked for out of sheer principle, but Khalila was so young, dammit, and so inexperienced, and it blew her pupils wide with arousal again. It was her turn to squirm on top of him. 

“Fingers are more efficient,” she said, her voice thick. Santi leaned in again and enjoyed the fierce, wet, messy kiss that resulted. 

“That’s fine. A rest down there sounds sensible. Not to be crude, dear, but I’ve got more than one hole.”

He couldn’t help but grin at the look of delight that crossed her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note, enlarged prostate causing health problems is an actual medical thing! It's just that every time I tried to put more about the symptoms into this, it turned into piss kink. And I was like omg this is long enough without adding EXTRA kink.


	16. Knotting - Khalila/Dario

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full chapter tags and warnings: 
> 
> **Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dominant Omega/submissive Alpha, Light D/s, Knotting, Heat Sex, Altered Mental States, Porn Without Plot**
> 
> There is some vague suggestion that this is their first ever heat sex. I think it's slightly more likely that this is just their first successful heat sex where they've talked enough beforehand to understand why it's going to be different, but you imagine whatever you want. Both characters definitely over-age here.

Dario looked up at her from his supine position. His eyes were very wide, but very dark too.

''All right?'' She bent down to kiss him, dodging his tilted mouth to land on his cheek just where his soft, neat goatee changed into bare skin. From there, it took very little effort to kiss her way down to his neck, lavishing his hot, swollen scent gland with attention from her tongue and lips. He smelt head-spinningly delicious. Dark chocolate and saffron. Expensively bittersweet, of course. 

Just because she didn't like penetration didn't mean Dario was useless. His mouth had been very well exercised, in a, hm, a non-syllabic manner. That had siphoned the worst of the heat peak away, and now she just felt flighty and tactile and mischievous. Maybe even cruel. In a nice way. It was good for him to learn self restraint. 

''This wasn't what I expected, flower.'' He laughed. A fragile façade of amusement tried to swing into place over his hungry, strained look of arousal.

No.

She pinched his chest and hissed to bat away that irritating false mask of expression, and knew from the sudden glaze in his eyes that her pheromones must have just spiked. 

''I'm never what you expect, Dario. One day you'll develop the ability to remember that for longer than a day.''

That came out more sarcastic and nasty than she'd intended, but, well, it was how she felt. 

He should be lucky she was making the effort to speak at all. Her heat simmered underneath every inch of her skin like a fever, clouding her mind. 

With a pleased purr, she wriggled her bare body down his, trapping his over-warm erection between them. He groaned and whined gently through his teeth. 

Once she was back at her previous viewing point, head resting on his thigh, she reached out and ran a finger up the hard, red shaft. The flaccid skin of his knot pooled at the base, fascinatingly soft to her touch. ''So. You were saying. I really did think alphas always knotted when they came.''

Dario sucked in a breath as if he was desperate for air. 

''No. Needs heat pheromones, and ideally penetration.''

Khalila nodded and ran her finger back down the other side. Then she popped her damp finger into her mouth. She was getting used to the taste. Without penetration, she had to be inventive about satisfying the ridiculous biological demands of heat. 

''But you _can_ knot without penetration.''

He made a reluctant agreeing sound. His scent swung a little towards sour and she nuzzled his inner thigh in an instinctive comforting response. 

''And you're going to show me it, even though it's a bit uncomfortable?''

Another agreeing sound. 

''Thank you.'' She leaned up on one elbow, and with her other hand collected some of the extremely abundant slick between her legs. He deserved a present. 

He accepted the gift of her gratitude very nicely, all soft eyes and burning hot mouth against her wet fingers, and his scent settling to delicious sweetness again. 

''You're beautiful,'' she whispered. 

“So are you.” His hand stroked her back in firm, smooth movements that didn’t disturb her oversensitive skin. Lovely. She stayed cuddled against him for a few more moments, until treacherous heat lassitude started to settle on her again like cobwebs and she had to shake herself free. 

“Show me,” she demanded again as she wriggled back down the bed. She nipped at his thigh. “Get on with it.”

“All right, all right. It’s boring, really. You just need to stimulate the tip and the knot at the same time.” He moved his hands to the appropriate places as he spoke, and started to stroke himself. 

Normally she’d be more than happy to watch Dario pleasure himself in front of her, but she was feeling all hot and bothered with rising heat, and it didn’t do a jot for her patience. 

“Can I help?” She shifted so that she was lying between Dario’s legs. He looked down the length of his body at her, his eyes wide, all white and black. She loved that lust-drunk look on him. 

“I … Yeah?” He took his hand away from his knot. She examined it closely. It was already starting to swell and darken in colour. The wonderful fine-grained softness had changed to a smoother feeling as the skin tightened. When she prodded the bulge, it gave under her touch, and Dario grunted. So she prodded it again, and then looked up at him for feedback. 

“Pressure. That’s all. Just squeeze it and move up and down a little bit. Like this.” His hand covered hers, and she let him guide her movements for a minute.

“Ow,” she complained as his hand tightened on hers. 

“Sorry! Sorry, flower.” He rubbed her hand apologetically with his thumb, and started to sit upright. Bitter scent, now. Worry. 

“Oh, lie back down,” she snapped. “But, that tight? Really?” She tightened her grip cautiously. 

“Mm. Yes. If you think what it’s … the natural …” Dario waved his free hand around for a moment and then gave her an embarrassed grin. 

She grinned back. “It’s sweet when you think I don’t know the sort of language you use when I’m not around, darling.”

Soon his knot reached the size where … hm, yes. She put both hands around the soft, spongy ring of flesh. That gave her much more leverage to _squeeze_. 

Dario groaned, loud and startled, and his hips bucked up against her. “Like that,” he said, in a dazed voice, as his other hand yanked fast at the wet tip of his shaft. “Yes. Fuck.”

She could feel the knot swelling now, inflating so quickly with blood that it seemed to push back against her grip. Between her fingers, she could see its dark colour. She released her grip for just a moment, long enough to lean in and lick the hot, smooth bulge. It tasted nice. All of him tasted nice. Her stupid heat brain wanted to lick him head to toe. 

“Soon,” Dario said, the word almost hidden in a whine. She eyed his cock. She was much more familiar with what that looked like on the edge, and yes, Dario was very, very close. 

So she shifted her position and took a deep breath and _squeezed_ and held the squeeze tight, so tight that pain sizzled along the fault lines in her hands. 

With an incoherent cry, Dario came. The knot in her grasp pulsed hard. She let her aching hands fall away, and gazed with fascination at the ruddy, stretched-shiny skin. Wider than her fist. It didn’t give under her fingers at all. She resisted the silly urge to see how hard she could push before it did.

So this was an alpha's knot. _Her_ alpha's knot. 

She definitely still didn’t want it inside her, but it was definitely worthy of further study. 

In just a minute. His come was running down his shaft, and the hot, restless itch of heat made her lean in to lick it up. 

It was good. Pheromones, probably. Extra-concentrated. She wanted to purr. 

Which was, objectively, a stupid thought about lapping up your husband’s emissions. Definitely stupid. 

Tasty, though. 

Suddenly, Dario’s hand tried to - what? To push her away? No! Hers! 

She growled - but then Dario _growled back_. 

Shocked for a moment back into something resembling her right mind, she stared up at him. He looked tense and wary and almost angry. Very, very desperate. 

She tried nuzzling his thigh comfortingly. Such nice thighs. Would he like a bite? _She’d_ like to bite. 

Wait, was he crying? Tears? Dario?

With a huge effort, she swallowed the saliva pooling in her mouth and asked, “What’s wrong?” Her voice sounded hoarse and dreamy, even to herself.

“Nothing.” He stroked her hair and the nape of her neck and she purred at the touch despite herself. “Just let me just …” He squeezed his knot, hard enough to blanch his knuckles and, rather than wince, let out a sigh of relief. 

A lightbulb went on, dim in the hot redness of Khalila’s mind, but there nonetheless. Knots only 'blew' in heat sex, and ideally with penetration. No penetration equalled no omega, maybe? Failed tie?

She wasn’t the only one fighting her instincts, then.

“You need pressure. I see.” She wriggled against the sheets underneath her. Damp and scratchy. Ugh. “Sorry. Still here! Love you.” Words were getting lost. Oh, she hated heat.

“I love you.” He patted her neck again, and rubbed her mating bite. The thought of his teeth in her again, hot and sharp and just right, made her insides go molten and wobbly. She mewed encouragingly, and he made a funny groaning noise in response. “Come up here, then, my angel. Let me take care of the peak for you.”

My Dario. So lovely.

His face was still a mess from the last time. 

But she had a better idea than his adorable self-sacrifice. She didn’t want that massive knot in her, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t help him with it. 

On clumsy limbs, she clambered along him until she was lying atop him, and could get her thighs nice and tight around his hands. They were still protectively clutching his poor unclaimed knot. 

“Mine,” she mumbled, satisfied, when he moved his hand away and swore in three different languages at the clench of her thighs around him. She could squirm like this, and it did both things? Right? Him and her. Stimulation. Good. 

Her thighs working so hard drove her to orgasm with shocking speed. She let herself fall happily into peak heat, for once, grinding Dario underneath her.


	17. Heat sex - Santi/Dario

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am just writing this straight into the Chapter Text box, forgive typos, incoherencies and other bullshit. 
> 
> Full chapter warnings: **Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Age Difference, mentions of rough sex (ish)**
> 
> Idek what's going on this afternoon. Shout if I need to tag it with anything else.

"One day, I won't bail you out like this," Santi panted. 

"I wouldn't call what you're doing right now bailing me out. Something 'in'. Better analogy." That was far too coherent a sentence from Dario. Santi growled and jerked his hips forwards until Dario's satisfied little snigger trailed off with a groan, then he withdrew entirely and sat up. 

"If you're that chatty, you can go and get us another drink."

Dario huffed and muttered insults and made a fuss, but he climbed out of bed and walked to the kitchen. Santi watched him leave, admiring the tight sway of that arse. 

He accepted the cold glass of water from Dario, and downed it in a few gulps. As he wiped his mouth, he noticed Dario staring at him with glazed eyes. But when he reached out to stroke Dario's cheek, the younger man just blinked away the obvious heat haze and said,

"Thirsty, are you, old man?"

Santi narrowed his eyes, then reached out and grabbed Dario, hauling him into the bed and tangling their naked bodies together. That gave him a good chance to inhale, and yes, Dario's dark chocolate scent was just as fresh and strong as ever. Enough to make Santi feel loopy himself. Why was Dario trying to hold back the haze of heat?

He needed to spare only a fraction of his thoughts for countering Dario's scuffling; Dario couldn't beat him anyway, and he was barely trying. Mind you, he certainly was kicking up a fuss. Did he really think Santi didn't understand Spanish insults by now?

He growled a warning directly into Dario's ear, and Dario froze. 

Santi's mouth brimmed with the the word "Good," but he managed to stay quiet. Praising Dario while he was being exasperating never got him anywhere. 

"What's the matter with you? Bitter because I didn't make you a proper nest?" He flipped Dario over onto his stomach, and rubbed his cock teasingly between Dario's legs, over his wet entrance and tight balls. 

"Oh, fuck off." Dario squirmed his head from side to side on the pillow. His flushed face was ringed with flat, plastered curls. Thoroughly heated up. It must be costing him a lot of effort to keep up his silly, typical façade. 

"Contrary to what I must admit is popular belief," Santi licked Dario's shoulder, "I don't seek out omegas who will insult me in bed."

Dario snorted. His inhale sounded a touch unsteady. "Come on. Wolfe definitely insults you."

"Sometimes." Santi started to move from one of Dario's showily muscled shoulders to the other, kissing and licking. "Sometimes because he wants to exhort me to new heights. Sometimes because I'm doing something deservedly daft." He moved up to Dario's neck, and held his face so close to the sensitive nape that his lips brushed it as he spoke. "He's never insulted me for doing him a favour, though."

That last bit was utter nonsense, but Dario didn't need to know that. 

Dario was breathing a little more heavily now, and wriggling restlessly. So Santi dropped his full weight onto Dario and shocked a strangled yelp from him. 

"So if you want something different, next time you turn up at my door dripping wet because you can't even manage a calendar by yourself, then you _ask_." He scraped his teeth very gently over Dario's neck, which produced a phenomenal quiver. "I'm open to ideas." He scraped again, a touch harder, and ground his hips down, pushing his cock into the space between Dario's thighs and the mattress. "Do you want to be laid down in a nest and pampered like the spoilt little brat you are?" He stroked Dario's side, fanning his hand wide in a gesture both . "Or do you want me to expend even more energy on you? Chase you and catch you and drag you into the nest?"

He couldn't resist fucking Dario then, lining up hastily and plunging deep, gritting his teeth onto Dario's neck and almost missing Dario's answering moans under his own thundering heartbeat. 

"Fuck," Dario mumbled under his breath, and, miraculously, nothing else coherent. Santi shifted into a slightly better position for his satisfaction, and less so for Dario's. Just to test. 

After several minutes of steadily louder whines, Dario flung one arm up, burrowed his face under it and mumbled, "Please?"

"Please what?"

"Please, everything. Please. Sorry. Sorry I'm a bastard." Dario peered up at Santi, only one eye visible. Still hiding, but not lying anymore. Not fighting the dizzy pull of heat.

"Well." Santi pressed a kiss to the curve of Dario's exposed cheek, felt Dario's eyelashes brush against him as he closed his eyes. "Well, luckily for you, I'm rather used to bastards."

He fucked Dario slowly, this time, lavishing kisses and bites all along his neck and shoulders, and daring to mumble praise when Dario hadn't done anything but moan in bliss for a while. 

For the first time, Dario relaxed into the tie; stayed quiet and relaxed and hazy rather than throwing sharpened words. And whn Santi purred, pitched low in his chest, meant to reassure and to praise, Dario briefly, stutteringly, purred back.


End file.
